Verb Valency

smiles

Well today in the liguistics we discussed verb valency - how many objects a verb can take.

ie. "give" takes 2 in most cases, ie "I gave the bread to the girl"
"sleep" can take none, "I sleep."

The question is who can think of one which takes 3 objects, if not more?

They're scratching their heads, so it's fun What about ye?

<< Fio >>

Gordon

Interesting word.

I would hazard a makey uppy word of.... Trinitise (to make three people be known as a trinity) but it is most likely a bastardised version of a noun.

...or maybe not.

smiles

Here's a nice little explanation on what I am talking about... http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsValency.htm

<< Fio >>

Yoda

"I slept a deep, deep sleep."

smiles

Originally posted by Yoda
"I slept a deep, deep sleep."

Er, that counts as 1.

<< Fio >>

Yoda

Yes, but you said that sleep couldn't take an object.

Your basic premise, however, is flawed. "to the girl" is a prepositional phrase, not an object. Even if you thought of it as a proper dative case (German "dem Mädchen"), the fact that "the bread" (German "das Brot") is an accusative is enough to show that what "give" is "governing" is a set of different things. But you're suggesting that it takes two "objects" as though the objects were the same.

(I love case grammar. It's so much nicer than that Chomskyan tree swollop.)

sceptre

Originally posted by Yoda
(I love case grammar. It's so much nicer than that Chomskyan tree swollop.)

Indeed. I've just had an entire term of that Chomskyan tree swallop. I should have used a phrase like that in the exam:D

josh40

I ate an apple ,an orange , a pear...........

Talliesin

Originally posted by josh40
I ate an apple ,an orange , a pear...........

That's three clauses where "ate" takes one object and one subject in each clause (the clauses separately being "I ate an apple", "I ate an orange" and "I ate a pear").

Stark

I gave the bread to the girl for the boy? God that sounds really bad. Interesting one alright.

Talliesin

Originally posted by k.oriordan
I gave the bread to the girl for the boy? God that sounds really bad. Interesting one alright.

Again that breaks down when you parse it. First you have the clause "I gave the bread to the girl", and then another clause about your reason for doing so (don't know the grammatical term for this, it's pretty much what's called reification in Knowledge Representation systems). I don't think it counts as "give" taking two objects. In the second clause the subject is your act of giving the bread and the boy is the object.

Yoda

I don't think you folks know what you mean when you use terms like "object", because you aren't making sense.

Case grammar uses terms like Agent and patient. Traditional grammar recognizes Nominative, Accusative, and so on. "Object" in and of itself isn't precise enough to say anything in the context. I still think the parameters in the original question posed are so weak as to make this discussion rather pointless.

Praetorian

I'm not long back from New york and I'm "Glad the Big Apple delivered"