ǀae

Verb meaning: SEND [send]

Comment: The most basic meaning of this verb is probably 'to send somebody to do something', but in elicitation it could also be used for 'to send s.th. for somebody' (the intended meaning here). There is a lot of variation as the examples show; the construction can, for example, depend on the animacy of the third argument (inanimate locations are expressed by a V + V(path) serial verb construction, with the location encoded as oblique object, whereas animates are more likely to be treated as beneficiaries (encoded as Dative objects, with a BEN suffix -a on the verb), etc. Furthermore, the verb appears very often but not always, with a suffix -a; in many cases this could be interpreted as the (productive) BEN suffix, but there are also cases where one would expect the BEN suffix (e.g. examples with a Dative recipient), but there is no such a suffix (ex. 22), and cases where one would not expect a BEN suffix, but where one finds a suffix -a; furthermore, the -a suffix is normally not found in IRR constructions, which would not be the case if it was a BEN suffix; the use of the suffix -a with ǀae might thus depend on speakers' choice/preference; it could also be a (not completely) lexicalized suffix; the data in the corpus (both naturally spoken and elicited), until now, do not allow to set up any specific rule for the use or non-use of this suffix.

Basic coding frame

Schema: 1 V 2-dat 3

Alternations