Studies in Language. International Journal sponsored by the Foundation “Foundations of Language” - Volume 19, Issue 1, 1995

Modern Greek, like English, has double object constructions of the type Ed gave Sue a rose; in Modern Greek, the recipient in this construction appears in the genitive case, but like an accusative object can correspond to a verbal clitic. In Modern Greek, the range of semantic roles (theta-roles) that can appear as subject is more restricted than in English, but the range of semantic roles that can appear as object (in the position of Sue) is broader than in English, encompassing in particular Source expressions (cf. */ borrowed John some money) and Benefactive expressions where the Patient is not itself intended as to the benefit of the Benefactive (cf. *Peter opened the old lady a door) — Modern Greek literal translations of both these examples are grammatical.

In the Belhare (Tibeto-Burman) verb, morphotactics and allomorphy, but not morpheme semantics, are sensitive to a distinction between direct (1>2, 1>3, 2>3, 3SG>3) and inverse (3NS>3, 3>2, 3>1, 2>1) participant configurations. Comparison of this phenomenon with Cree (Algonquian) and rGya-ro (Tibeto-Burman) calls for a distinction of morphemic and sub- or supra-morphemic inversion. The difference is semiotically interpreted in a general theory of "Resonance Morphology". The smallest resonant pattern is either compositional and meaningful, i.e. a "morpheme", or predictable and meaningless, i.e. an "eideme". Eidemes can be motivationally grounded in an extra-morphological domain (e.g. pragmatics). This is demonstrated for morphotactics and allomorphy in Belhare and for a parallel in French.