Person marking of the recipient on the verb (Synja Khanty)

NoRecM: Ditransitive verbs do not morphologically mark the person of the recipient.


(1) naŋen ńāń ma-l-ǝm.

I you.dat bread give-prs-1sg

‘I’m giving you bread.’ (S. O.)


(2) naŋen ńāń-ǝn ma-l-em.

I you.acc bread-loc give-prs-obj.1sg

‘I’m giving you bread.’ (S. O.)


In Synja Khanty, the recipients of ditransitive constructions can appear as objects (2) (Honti 1984: 96, Nikolaeva 1999a: 40, Solovar 2009: 72‒81), and thus the verb is agreed with them. But Khanty verbs only agree with the object in number (Rédei 1965: 54‒74, Onina 2009: 34‒38), which implies that the person of the recipient cannot be coded in the verb form.

Author: 

Nikolett F. Gulyás