Monday, November 12, 2012

Detail #1: a possessive and a causative structure

In some language,
"nom1 has an adjective nom2" turns out
[nom1] [verbalized adjective] [nom2, oblique object]

whereas "nom1 makes nom2 adjective" turns out as
[nom1] [verbalized adjective] [nom2, direct object]
The marking as direct object or oblique object may be obtained by some kind of adposition if the language is primarily isolating (in which case I'd suggest the oblique object be the only one marked at all), and in a more inflecting or agglutinating language, an accusative or somesuch would probably fit the bill fairly well.

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