36.1. Recipient objects
In ‘I gave the money to you,’ there are three participants: ‘I,’ ‘you,’ and ‘the money.’ The subject, ‘I,’ is the agent, the one doing the action. The patient is ‘the money,’ the one undergoing the action. The participant receiving the action is ‘you.’ We will call this role the recipient.
I gave the money to you.
agent patient recipient
In this English sentence, the recipient role is marked as the object of the preposition ‘to.’
In SENĆOŦEN, unlike English, the recipient is never marked as the object of the preposition. In SENĆOŦEN, the recipient is marked as the object of the verb in a transitive sentence. In this section, we cover the details of how this role is expressed in SENĆOŦEN.
Models
| 1) | EṈO¸S SW̱ ¸E TŦE TÁLE. | ‘You give me the money.’ |
| 2) | EṈO¸S SW̱ HÁLE ¸E TŦE TÁLE. | ‘You folks give me the money.’ |
| 3) | EṈO¸TOL¸W̱ SW̱ ¸E TŦE TÁLE. | ‘You give us the money.’ |
| 4) | EṈO¸TOL¸W̱ SW̱ HÁLE ¸E TŦE TÁLE. | ‘You folks give us the money.’ |
| 5) | EṈO¸SE SEN ¸E TŦE TÁLE. | ‘I give you the money.’ |
| 6) | EṈO¸SE ȽTE ¸E TŦE TÁLE. | ‘We give you the money.’ |
| 7) | EṈO¸SE SEN HÁLE ¸E TŦE TÁLE. | ‘I give you (pl.) the money.’ |
| 8) | EṈO¸SE ȽTE HÁLE ¸E TŦE TÁLE. | ‘We give you (pl.) the money.’ |
| 9) | EṈO¸T SEN ¸E TŦE TÁLE. | ‘I give him/her/them the money.’ |
| 10) | EṈO¸T ȽTE ¸E TŦE TÁLE. | ‘We give him/her/them the money.’ |
| 11) | EṈO¸T SW̱ ¸E TŦE TÁLE. | ‘You give him/her/them the money.’ |
| 12) | EṈO¸T SW̱ HÁLE ¸E TŦE TÁLE. | ‘You folks give him/her/them the money.’ |
| 13) | EṈO¸TES ¸E TŦE TÁLE. | ‘He/she/they gives/give him/her/them the money.’ |
‣ 1 Compare this set of models with the models shown in §32.1. Notice that the objects and subjects are the same.
‣ 2 The difference between ȻENÁṈET ‘help’ in the models of §32.1 and EṈO¸T ‘give’ in these models is in the role of the object suffix. In §32.1, the object of ȻENÁṈET is the patient, the one undergoing the action. In these models here, with EṈO¸T, the role of the object suffix is the recipient.
‣ 3 In SENĆOŦEN, the recipient in an active sentence always is marked as the direct object.
‣ 4 In sentences with both a recipient and a patient, the patient is always the object of the preposition ¸E.
‣ 5 This layout of model 1, ‘You give me the money,’ shows the roles:
EṈO¸-S SW̱ ¸E TŦE TÁLE.
root‑recipient agent patient
give‑me you the money
‣ 6 It might be helpful to compare recipient patterns in SENĆOŦEN to English to see how the two languages really differ. In English we can express the first model in two ways:
You give me the money.
You give the money to me.
In English, as these two sentences show, the recipient can come right after the verb, like an object, or it can be the object of the preposition ‘to.’ In English, the patient (‘the money’ in these sentences) either follows the recipient or follows the verb.
‣ 7 In SENĆOŦEN, there is no such choice. Here is what we will call the Recipient Object Rule:
In SENĆOŦEN, the recipient is the object of the verb and never the object of the preposition.
When a recipient is present, any patient must be the object of the preposition.
‣ 8 With recipient verbs (like ‘give’) in English, the patient is never the object of a preposition. With recipient verbs in SENĆOŦEN, the patient is always the object of the preposition.
‣ 9 Here are some other verbs that take a recipient object:
ȺYEL¸TW̱ ‘lend (to use and return) to someone’;
EȻOST ‘teach to someone how’
₭IṈELE¸TW̱ ‘lend (a consumable) to someone’
ȽELTOST ‘sprinkle, splash on someone’
NU¸NEĆT ‘pay to someone’;
SEMOST ‘sell to someone’
YEŦOST ‘tell, give news to someone’
‣ 10 Note that most of these recipient object verbs end in ‑OST. This is an old suffix that is no longer productive. Even the oldest L1 speakers of SENĆOŦEN do not recognize this as a regular word-building suffix. This is what linguists call an ‘applicative’ suffix—a suffix that indicates that the direct object is not a patient. In the next section we will discuss an applicative suffix that is productive.
 | EȻOSS ĆE TŦE SENĆOŦEN. | ‘Teach me SENĆOŦEN.’ |
 | X̱EṈ E SW̱ I¸ AXEṈ “NE ṈENṈENE¸”? | ‘Can you say “NE ṈENṈENE¸?”’ |
| EWE. EN¸ÁN¸ U¸ ṮI¸. | ‘No. It’s too hard.’ |
| DÁ¸ET ĆE! | ‘Try it!’ |
36.1A. Translate each into English and identify the agents, patients, and recipients in each of these sentences. |
| 1. EṈO¸S E SW̱ ¸E TŦE TÁLE? 2. NU¸NEĆT ȽTE ¸E ȻSE ṈEN¸ TÁLE. 3. EWE SEN S ȽELTOSSE ¸E TŦE ḰO¸. 4. YEŦOSSE SEN SE¸. |
36.1B. Make four new sentences with recipient objects. |