Some verbs are syntactically transitive but lack the expected object marking.
Cree has four verb classes, correlated with transitivity and with the gender of the arguments. Cree has a two-gender system, animate versus inanimate. (In spite of the names, gender is not wholly semantic, but may be lexically specified; Wolfart (1973: 22) writes '...only a list can account for the gender of Cree nouns.)
| II | inanimate intransitive: | subject is an inanimate noun (necessarily 3rd person) |
| AI | animate intransitive: | subject is an animate noun |
| TI | transitive inanimate: | object is an inanimate noun |
| TA | transitive animate: | object is an animate noun |
The first three classes mark person (including obviation) and number of the subject, while the TA paradigm marks these values for both subject and object. In general, verb roots are transitive or intransitive, and have paired forms that alternating according to animacy:
| inanimate | animate | |
| intransitive | mihkwa:w (II)
'it is red' |
mihkosiw (AI) 'he is red' |
| transitive | pakamaham (TI)
'he strikes it' |
pakamahwe:w (TA)
'he strikes him' |
The relationship between the inanimate and animate members of each verbal pair is derivational, the two typically having different suffixes.
There is a class of verbs which is syntactically transtive, in as much as they can take overt third person objects, but morphologically pattern with the animate intransitives (AI); Bloomfield (1946) calls these 'pseudo-transitive'. For example, the verb 'give out' occurs both with inanimate and animate objects. However, this does not correlate with the expected alternation between TI (transitive inanimate) and TA (transitive animate). Rather, the verb remains in the AI class regardless:
|
inanmate object
|
animate object
|
||||||
| mi:na | pa:kisikan | me:ki-w | ta:pwe: | me:ki-w | pe:yak | misatimwa: | |
| also | gun(INAN) | give.out-3SG.PROX | truly | give.out-3SG.PROX | one | horse(AN) | |
| 'he also gave out a gun…' | 'Truly he gave out one horse;' | ||||||
|
inanmate object
|
animate object
|
|
| w-miigwe-n | w-miigwe-nan | |
| 3-give.away-INAN | 3-give.away-AN | |
| 's/he gives it/them away' | 's/he gives him away' |
This indicates that, at least from a larger Algoniquian perspective, these verbs are indeed syntactically transitive.
Anderson, Stephen R. 1991. Syntactically arbitrary inflectional morphology. In Geerd Booij and Jaap van Marle (eds) Yearbook of Morphology 1991.5-19.
Bloomfield, Leonard. 1946. Algonquian. In: Harry Hoijer et al. (eds) Linguistic structures of Native America (Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology 6). New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation. 85-129.
Valentine, J. Randolph. 2001. Nishnaabemwin reference grammar. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Wolfart, H. Christoph. 1996. Sketch of Cree, an Algonquian language. In: Ives Goddard (ed.) Handbook of North American Indians (vol. 17: Languages). Washington: Smithsonian Institution.