Ganove:

Kirilo81:In my understanding ditransitivity (at least in a narrow sence) implies the same morphological encoding for both direct and indirect object. You find this in English, Indonesian etc. but not in Esperanto. Of course the valency of doni postulates three arguments, within these two objects.

Then I probablby misunderstood this sentence 'Duoble transitiva verbo estas verbo, kiu devige havas tri argumentojn: subjekto, rekta objekto, kaj nerekta objekto.' [source url=http://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duoble_transitiva_verbo]Vikipedio[/url]] which I thought that it would mean 'Ditransitive verbs are verbs, which have to have three arguments: a subject, a direct object and an indirect object.'

In fact you're right and it was me who didn't clarify in advance, that I wouldn't use the term in its common sence (because I couldn't remember how the "I gave you a book" construction is named, it's the dative shift or broader applicative), so I apologize.

Kirilo81:

Ganove:

Kirilo81:In my understanding ditransitivity (at least in a narrow sence) implies the same morphological encoding for both direct and indirect object. You find this in English, Indonesian etc. but not in Esperanto. Of course the valency of doni postulates three arguments, within these two objects.

Then I probablby misunderstood this sentence 'Duoble transitiva verbo estas verbo, kiu devige havas tri argumentojn: subjekto, rekta objekto, kaj nerekta objekto.' [source url=http://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duoble_transitiva_verbo]Vikipedio[/url]] which I thought that it would mean 'Ditransitive verbs are verbs, which have to have three arguments: a subject, a direct object and an indirect object.'

In fact you're right and it was me who didn't clarify in advance, that I wouldn't use the term in its common sence (because I couldn't remember how the "I gave you a book" construction is named, it's the dative shift or broader applicative), so I apologize.

No worries, that's all right. I also tend to confuse something with something else sometimes and to err is human.
So please take no offend, there was no offend meant.

Would I be wrong in supposing that 'libro, kiun mi vidis vin ŝteli' could be unpacked as:

mi vidis vin
mi vidis tion (ke vi ŝtelis la libron)

[Inevitably you also saw the book, but put that aside]

Wouldn't it then be true that vidis has two direct objects, neither of which can be transformed into a prepositional phrase, or indirect object.

The connection with the problematical 'who did he say stole the book?' is that here diri also has two objects.

Li diris 1. nomon
Li diris 2. ion ankoraŭ (ke tiu ŝtelis)

sudanglo:Would I be wrong in supposing that 'libro, kiun mi vidis vin ŝteli' could be unpacked as:

mi vidis vin
mi vidis tion (ke vi ŝtelis la libron)

[Inevitably you also saw the book, but put that aside]

Let's do the unpacking from the very beginning.
First we should converte the relative clause to a main clause in order to have a better view.
After doing so, we get: Mi vidis vin ŝteli libron.

Asking for the object 'Kion mi vidis?', we get: vin ŝteli libron
So the object should be: vin ŝteli libron

If we let it how it is, one might think both 'vin' and 'libron' are the object of ŝteli.
As part of forming the object of 'vidis', the 'vi' has changed to a 'vin'.
In order to undo that, we have to change it back to a subject: vi ŝteli libron

Still there's a verb error, since 'ŝteli' is still in infintive.
Now we focus at the tense of 'Mi vidis vin ŝteli libron.' and we see: past
Now we know that the 'steli' must be past and we get the phrase: vi ŝtelis libron

So let's put the meaning of 'vi ŝtelis libron' in a box.
First we need a box which represents a relative clause, for example this one: ■
Now we put the meaning of 'vi ŝtelis libron' in ■.
Now ■ represents the meaning of 'you stole a book'.

So now let's re-build the sentence with this box:
Mi vidis ■-n.

sudanglo:Wouldn't it then be true that vidis has two direct objects, neither of which can be transformed into a prepositional phrase, or indirect object.

I think this question should be answered, since it is obviouse that the object of 'vidis' is only the box ■-n

sudanglo:The connection with the problematical 'who did he say stole the book?' is that here diri also has two objects.

Li diris 1. nomon
Li diris 2. ion ankoraŭ (ke tiu ŝtelis)

'who did he say stole the book?' is different as the previous phrase. Here we have a main clause with an attributive clause.
'who' asks for the subject of the attributive clause.

It should mean the same saying 'He said someone stole the book.' and asking 'Who is someone?'.

So if we ask 'What did he say?', we get the answer: 'someone stole the book.'
So let's put the meaning of 'someone stole the book.' in a box.
We need a different box as ■, though, since here we don't have a relative clause but an attributive clause, so let's take this box: □
We put the meaning of 'someone stole the book.' in □.
Now □ represents the meaning of 'someone stole the book'.

Re-building the phrase with the box □, we get: He said □.

We now have to adjust the question 'Who is someone?', since we can't see inside □ anymore.
We have to ask 'What is the subject of □ ?'

We see that 'He said □.' has just one object, or more precisely, one attributive object.