transitivity, locative prefixes, etc.

[R. Rankin]

All,

Many thanks indeed for all the really fascinating
input.  I sort of figured that this might be like
squirting the garden hose at the hornet's nest.
Obviously a lot depends on what model of grammar one
tends to "think in".  It also depends on whether we
take a semantic or a purely morpho-syntactic point of
view.

> 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").

I've always sort of liked Matt Dryer's notion of
"primary object" and "secondary object".

> 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.)

Well, Osage works generally very much like Dakota.  I
think we can say that of nearly all Mississippi Valley
Siouan languages (I haven't looked at Winnebago).
Pam's "gut feeling" was mine too, and that's what I
told Carolyn.  Like Randy, I noted that very many
locative prefixes are part of their verbs and range
from totally transparent to totally opaque in
analyzability (I haven't had my coffee this a.m. so I
don't know if that's spelled right.).

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

I have a feeling that talking about "semantic obliques"
(or other semantic analyses) is just a fancy way of
saying "we're translating this sentence into English
and then analyzing the English." . . . something that
used to get Mary Haas's hackles up.  I guess, like Pam,
I'm trying to think of things in morphosyntactic terms
taking into consideration "the genius of the Siouan
languages", i.e., the fact that they have real
postpositions that allow for oblique arguments,
ordinary PP's, BUT they also have these three locative
prefixes that are "different" from postpositions.  Why?
What does this difference imply grammatically?  Etc.
That's what you guys are helping so much with here.
Thanks again for your comments, feelings and analyses.
All are very valuable to us.  I'd be happy to hear more
along the same lines.

Best,

Bob