Verbal clauses 163
(79) Ita maca tang buku.
Ita AV.read my book
‘Ita read my book.’
(80) Bu Yus noles sorat.
Mrs Yus AV.write letter
‘Bu Yus wrote a letter.’
In each sentence the subject precedes the verb and initiates the action. The mor-
phologically unmarked object follows the verb and is affected in some sense by
the action. As can be expected, there is a large number of verbs that belong to
this category. Voice marking on transitive verbs is discussed more thoroughly
in Chapter 9 section 1.
4.4 Ditransitive clauses
Finally, there are a number of three-place verbs that occur as predicates of ac-
tive clauses. Semantically, these verbs take an actor argument, a theme argu-
ment, and a location or goal as a third argument. Syntactically they are identical
to transitive verbs with the addition of a prepositional phrase (the location or
goal argument). These sentences have a basic subject - verb - object - PP word
order, and the verb obligatorily takes voice morphology. These properties are
evident in the sentences in (81-83).
(81) Hadi ngerem paket ka Bambang.
Hadi AV.send package to Bambang
‘Hadi sent a package to Bambang.’
(82) Sengko' nyaba' buku neng meja.
I AV.put book on table
‘I put the book on the table.’
(83) Bapa' a-berri' pesse dha' oreng se lapar.
father AV-give money to man REL hungry
‘Father gave money to the hungry man.’
There is a small number of root verbs that fall into this category including bagi
‘give’, tambu ‘throw’, and a number of verbs of communication and others, e.g.
nempak ‘kick’, that are optionally ditransitive. However, there are many derived
verbs that act as predicates in ditransitive clauses. These are detailed in Chapter
10.