Advances in Role and Reference Grammar

ATTRIBUTIVES AND IDENTIFICATIONALS 453

With verbs like vieiller "to grow old" and grandir "to grow/grow up", either
auxiliary may be used. Moigret claims that when such an alternation is pos­
sible, the use of être corellates with an interpretation which emphasizes the
resultant state. The difference between verbs like vieiller and grandir vs.
mourir and naître has to do with the discreteness of the endpoint. Growing
up and growing old are processes which do not have discrete endpoints
(hence the typical use of avoir), though at some point one may be judged to
have passed into a new category: child to grown up, young to old (hence the
possible use of être). On the other hand, being born and dying are processes
with discrete endpoints, hence, the use of être is conventional in this case.
As expected from the description above, some verbs which take en and
allow //-inversion take the auxiliary avoir, as shown in (56)-(57), since they
don't fall under either of the classes specified to take être.
(56) il a manqué trois étudiants.
IL has lacking three students
"Three student are missing."
(57) Il en a manqué trois.
IL of-them has lacking three
"Three of them are missing."
Attributive/identificational constructions in French likewise will take avoir
as an auxiliary as the unmarked case, since they do not fall into those sub­
sets of structures satisfying the conditions for the use of auxiliary être. Thus
we find that although the default auxiliary is from the BE-class in Italian
(essere) and the HAVE-class in French (avoir), in each instance the attribu­
tive/identificational constructions fall outside of the characterizations that
specify membership in the marked auxiliary class and thus appear in the
default class.

4.2 Dakota

In Dakota, attributive and identificational constructions generally show an

objective pattern, as was seen in (10)-(15), repeated here as (58)-(63).

(58) Ó-wa-kiye.

I-A help

"I helped him."