Dairwueh: A Subject and Object Preposition

Dairwueh also has prepositions marking the subject, object and the indirect object, although these prepositions are very optional. They serve a few roles, however, and are mandatory when the conditions for some of these roles are fulfilled:

• enabling preprepositional arguments for subjects, objects and indirect objects
• intensification of the verb (optional)
• topicalization (optional for fronted objects)
• gerund formation for whenever the gerunds are subjects or objects
• a variety of things with regards to transitivity-changing operations
• introduces direct objects with normally intransitive verbs
• introduces datives for verbs that normally do not take them
• marking resumptive pronouns that are objects (mandatory)

The subject preposition ne cannot take genitive subjects in most dialects, but does tend to imply definiteness - and is also the main way of marking definiteness for intransitive subjects. The object preposition ne takes whichever case the direct object of the verb takes, and thus is one of the few prepositions to take many different cases. Obviously, the prepositions for subjects and objects are identical except for the case they take. The indirect object preposition ser takes the dative.

Preprepositional arguments of subjects and objects serve certain roles:

For subjects, it represents the role a subject is or is imagined to be in:

sparage	-ŋa	ne	Armus	side	erb	-aŋ
farmer	masc sg gen	subj prepos	Armus (proper name)	good	is	3sg I
as a farmer			Armus	good	is

as a farmer, Armus is good

For objects, it represents, likewise, the role an object is in; there can be a causal relation - I ate something because it was food. I gave someone something because it was their inheritance. For indirect objects, ne can also be used for causal relations: I gave someone something because he was a cleric. ser does not permit causal relations: the preprepositional marks the use for which a direct object was given the indirect object. Notably, ser cannot stand with all dative arguments, only with those that are indirect objects.