[Histling-l] Historical syntax question

[Joe Salmons]

Folks,
I’m writing on behalf of Christian Ruvalcaba at UC Santa Cruz, who’s not on this list. We’ve been corresponding about a paper he’s finishing up and he has a question about English historical syntax that somebody MUST know something about. He’s looking at part-whole datives and integral construals, dealing with stuff like this:
                a. There are several branches to the tree.
                b. There is a smell to water.
                c. There was a kindness to his eyes.
                d. The tree has several branches to it.
                e. The pieces to the puzzle.
                f. ?Those cups are not to the same set.
While his paper is synchronic, he’s wondering basically if anybody had general ideas about the development of locative/dative marking and possession in Germanic or Indo-European languages.
You can respond to him directly --  chruvalc at ucsc.edu<mailto:chruvalc at ucsc.edu>.
Thanks!
Joe


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