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--- In ceqli@yahoogroups.com, Rex May - Baloo <rmay@m...> wrote: > on 2/16/04 9:45 AM, HandyDad at lsulky@r... wrote: > > > We shouldn't drop the indirect object into the prepositional phrase > > bucket, as I was earlier suggesting. > > I think I follow. > > "I throw you the ball" You is ind ob. Yes. > > Go tir to boli zi. > > But, > "I throw the ball into the house" the prep phrase, by our standards, is the > indirect obj, right? Not precisely. The indirect object is the recipient of the action; in this case, that's the INTERIOR of the house. > > Go tir to boli (faq) dan to dom. Yes, just what I was thinking: 'I throw the ball to inside the house'. Now it's clearer that 'to' is our indirect object marker, and then any other preposition just helps to identify the object or recipient: it's not the house as a whole, it's not the roof of the house, it's not the lawn just south of the house...it's the inside of the house. (Note how I've sneakily shifted the grammatical role of 'inside' from a preposition to a noun.) Thinking of it this way also clarifies that if we only say 'I throw the ball inside the house', then 'inside the house' is simply an adverb of location that modifies the action -- throwing -- without saying anything about the recipient, which could be the wall, the ceiling, yourself, whatever. > > This makes sense, but how do we prevent bolidan or bolifaq or bolifaqdan or > faqdan from forming as compounds? Practically, we don't need to worry > about this, but it keeping with making ceqli able to disambiguate > completely, we do need something. > > What would > > Go tir to boli te dan to dom. > > mean? Can the 'te' make 'dan to dom' into a noun phrase that is then > unambiguously an ind ob? Maybe, if we're not counting on "te" for other purposes as well (e.g., it couldn't mark a DIRECT object). Whatever word is used, there must be a rule that it cannot compound. Also, my Euromind wants 'inside of house' rather than 'inside the house': "Go tir to boli te dan vi dom." (defining "vi" as 'of') or a noun modifier: "Go tir to boli te dom de dan." (Or was it already established that the genitive is expressed by conjoining nouns?) --Krawn