CHAPTER 6 Learning Verbs Without Boots and Straps? The Problem of ‘Give’ in Saliba* Anna Margetts 1. INTRODUCTION Expressions of ‘giving’have repeatedly been the focus of linguistic research and dis- cussion. Besides Dixon’s (1982) classic study of nuclear and non-nuclear verbs, ‘giv- ing’ expressions have been the subject of detailed semantic analysis and crosslinguistic comparison in the recent literature (Newman, 1996, 1997). They are part of basic vocabulary, and through their frequent use they show morphological ir- regularities in many cases. Saliba contributes an unusual case of stem suppletion to the ongoing discussion, and provides a counterexample to the crosslinguistically common yet not universal mapping between ‘transfer’events and ditransitive verbs. Saliba is a Western Oceanic language of the Suauic family that belongs to the Papuan Tip Cluster (Ross, 1988: 190–212). It is spoken by about 1,000 people on Saliba Island at the Eastern tip of Papua New Guinea and it is acquired as children’s first language. Saliba is a nominative-accusative and head-marking language with SOV word order for lexical elements. The verb obligatorily carries a subject prefix and, if it is transitive, an object suffix. 1 In Saliba, two incomplete paradigms of ‘give’ verbs complement each other to form a single suppletive paradigm; that is, similarly to English go–went, they form a conjugation paradigm whose members differ in sound shape and which are histor- ically derived from independent verbs. The choice of verb depends on the person of the recipient. ‘Giving’events with a first- or second-person recipient are expressed by one verb, whereas ‘giving’ to a third person is expressed by another. The two verbs differ in argument structure. One is transitive; the other may be transitive or ditransitive. In addition, the two ‘give’ verbs encode different participants with their object suffix: One verb always encodes the theme, and the other can encode the theme or the recipient. 111