LINGUIST List 4.876

Mon 25 Oct 1993

Disc: Last Issue: Null-object

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1. United Snakes of America, Re: 4.864 Null object
2. "david joseph kathman", come with

Message 1: Re: 4.864 Null object

I wonder if there is a Germanic origin even for the French "venir avec."
I first heard "come with" in high school in Minnesota, where it jarred my
Maryland ears. My junior year in college, our French teacher took our class
to lunch at the Faculty Club after class one day. That was the first
(and only, for 20 years) that I heard "Vous venez avec?" (and by the way,
it clearly meant "avec nous"). The point is that the teacher was from
Alsace and had a German last name.
Susan Fischer

I don't want to beat this subject to death, but as a native "come with"
speaker I agree with Guy Modica's suggestion that this is not an instance
of a null object, but rather of a verb-particle construction parallel to
"come up", "come in", "come down", etc. The stress is always on the
"with", just as in parallel constructions that I would assume most people
would find acceptable; e.g. the stress and intonation in "Do you want to
come with?" are the same as in "Do you want to come in?". Also, upon
reflection I realized that this particle "with" is possible not only with
"come" and "go", but also with the transitive verb "bring", in which case
the order is "bring X with". Scenario: several people are ready to leave
for, say, the beach (yes, we have them in Chicago), but one member of the
group is trying to finish reading a book and is thus holding up the whole
group. "Come on, just bring it with!" one impatient group member tells
the straggler. This, to me, is perfectly acceptable, and two other
"come with" speakers agree with this judgement. This is, of course, parallel
to "bring it up", "bring it down", "bring it over", and so forth, and seems
to me to be pretty good evidence that we're dealing with the same kind of
thing.

Dave Kathman
djk1midway.uchicago.edu