248 Chapter 8 Prepositions and PPs
b. Adi nambu' keya dha' Ari bi' bato.
Adi AV.throw.at too to Ari with rock
‘Adi hit Ari with a rock too.’
In the a-sentences, the direct objects kancana ‘her friends’ and Ari occur as
plain NPs immediately following the verb. In the b-sentences, where keya ‘too’
intervenes between verb and object, the object occurs with the preposition dha'.
While many speakers accept both variants of such sentences, others do not,
judging the b-sentences unacceptable.
More marginal than the case above, for some speakers direct objects can
optionally be PP objects when the direct object of the clause represents one of a
group of potential entities affected, as in (123) and (124).
(123) %Alwi mokol dha' Amir.
Alwi AV.hit to Amir
‘Alwi hit Amir (out of a group of possible people).’
(124) %Lukman maca dha' buku jiya.
Lukman AV.read to book this
‘Lukman read this book (instead of some other he might have).’
(123) and (124) differ minimally from structures in which the object is a bare
NP, Alwi mokol Amir ‘Alwi hit Amir’ and Lukman maca buku jiya ‘Lukman
read this book’, only asserting that there was a possible set of potential entities
but these were the ones chosen. Again, this is structure is considered marginal
by some and completely ungrammatical by many.
The direct object is also marked by ka or dha' with transitive active invo-
litives, as in (125) and (126), the latter of which is taken from Stevens
1968:133.
(125) Alwi ta-pokol ka/dha' Amir.
Alwi IN-hit to Amir
‘Alwi accidentally hit Amir.’
(126) Sengko' ta-ng-abas dha' Paman.
I IN-AV-see to uncle
‘I accidentally saw Uncle.’