Friday, April 26, 2013

Detail #36: Duals and transitives

In a language where subjects and objects originally weren't that strictly distinguished, could it be possible for a dual verb to express both the situation where two subjects perform an action together, or the situation where one noun acts on the other? Thus, you'd get "I see you" as "see.1 dual", possibly with some other marker indicating which is the genuine subject: "is.1sg see.1 dual" vs. "is.2sg see.1 dual", but on the other hand, plural subjects go by the usual route: I see them: "see.1sg them", you and I see them: "see.1du them"

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