Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Nominative case and verbs of wanting in Choctaw


I was a little surprised by one aspect of the grammar in this clip.  They are talking about thing that they want, and one person says,

"Nanta yamma-k chi-banna-h?"
 what   that-obl    you-want-tense

'What do you want?"

The second person replies

"Palvska yvt sa banna-h."
Bread-nom  I-want-tense

"I want bread."

I am little surprised that in this interchange, bread appears in the nominative case, rather than in the accusative.  I'd like to know whether this pattern holds up more generally in the language.

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