Introduction

Grammatical relations like subject, direct object and indirect object are regarded, either overtly or covertly, as language universal entities by most of the contemporary linguistic theorists (see Dixon 1979, Chomsky 1981, Bresnan 1982a, Perlmutter 1983, Gazdar et al. 1985). Even the few who do not consider them to be language universals do claim that the notion of transitivity or transference which forms the basis of the notion of grammatical relations, plays the central role in the clause structure of all languages. For example, the postulation of the three core arguments, symbolized as S, A and O (or P), as language universal entities, represents such a claim (see Comrie 1981, Foley and Van Valin 1984, Andrews 1985).