transitivity, locative prefixes & the pronomin. argument hypothesis.

[Pamela Munro]

Re Shannon's question, this is definitional for me (thus perhaps a
theoretical position) --

If the argument in question is not marked with a postposition, it is a
"direct argument", i.e. either a subject (it's not that), or an object.
I called it a "direct object" because it's the only object. The case
where there is another agreeing object (not the one Bob asked about) is
interesting, of course.

To me, the terms "direct" and "indirect" for objects don't seem
particularly appropriate for this type of language, because there is a
mis-match. Often, in a language like this, the indirect (recipient)
object of a verb like 'give' is the one that will agree ( if it's one of
Shannon's "local persons"). As John pointed out, there may be a verb
with the locative applicative prefix which takes a normal (patient)
direct object that can agree. So we have agreeing indirect objects
lining up with agreeing patient objects vs. non-agreeing patients and
locatives -- ouch! This suggests that what is relevant is some kind of
person hierarchy or maybe a hierarchy of salience or something, rather
than straightforward grammatical relations. (But in my nihilistic vein
I'd prefer to think it's pretty much lexical, though with strong
semantic tendencies....) (This is assuming pretty much that only one
non-subject argument can agree, which is not perhaps strictly always
true.)

Thus I was not fully informative in saying that I thought the locative
argument in Bob's original sentence was (probably) a DO. (I don't know
Osage, so this is really all speculation. But that's my gut feeling.)

So these locatives might be "semantic obliques", but they aren't
"formal" obliques, at least for me.

Pam