She gave the child rice for the parents.

[Creyeditor]

Lōri
Hilrohaya taroya madua hāngo.
fil\I-alha-ya taro-ya madua fango\I
VBLZR\3.SUBJ-love-3.OBJ sweet_potato-3.POSS parents daughter-LOC
She gave the child sweet potato for parents.

This can only mean that the child is supposed to bring the sweet potato to the parents and the parents will eat it. Maybe the parents could not come and take their own rice. Bad parents So it's usually only "she gave the child rice that was intended for the parents" (she also gave her a letter for her teacher) but maybe also "she gave the child rice that was only appropriate to the parents" (carelessly, she also gave the child a game for over-12s and painkillers for the dogs).

[Squall]

So taking your sentence, "she gave the child rice for the parents" this could very easily mean:

...
- "she gave the child rice for the good of the parents" (she gave the child an education for the nation)

The word 'for' is a generalization of all those cases. The specific case is not told by the sentence, but we only know that it is "for the good of".

My conlang is boring and uses a benefactive preposition.
"for" can be also replaced with "favoring", "helping", "in favor of", and others.
I can make a conlang that uses derived terms instead of specific prepositions.

Yep. This is very often the case with translation challenges ... although perhaps not often to the extent of this one. The ones I marked in red are the ones I intended ... brighter red for higher fittingness.

I think that "as a favour to" is not generic, because I think that favors are asked before being done.

Le dio al niño el arroz por los padres.
3SG.DAT give<PST.3SG> PRP=DEF.M.SG child.SG DEF.M.SG rice PRP DEF.M.PL parents

Should it be:
Ella dio al niño arroz para los padres.


Another issue is the gender. The sentence in English doesn't tell the gender, but I can't imagine any cases in which the speaker doesn't know the gender of the child.

[Imralu]

I think that "as a favour to" is not generic, because I think that favors are asked before being done.

Not necessarily. People often anticipate things that others might want done and do them and that can also be called a favour.

[GrandPiano]

important ALERT! ALERT!

Indeed. can pack a whallop of different meanings in one little old word, eh?

Mandarin

她给了儿童米饭为父母。
Tā gěile értóng mǐfàn wèi fùmǔ.
She gave the child rice for the parents.

Sorry, you got the non-authentic sentence stamp from a native speaker (who finds the other examples as ambiguous in a normal context as the rest of us).

(Do you really have to go batshit with all these discrete or overlapping meanings, which Salmoneus had the patience to lay out, in a nat- or conlang?)

What's actually wrong with that sentence? 为? 给了? 儿童? Or does the problem lay deeper?

I think the main issue is that 为父母 cannot grammatically go at the end of the sentence. The normal position for 为…… phrases, as you can see in one of Lao Kou's sentences, is between the subject and the verb; the same can probably said for most if not all other prepositional phrases (although there are circumstances in which a 在…… phrase is placed at the end of the sentence). The 了 after 给 also feels a little off to me, although I could be wrong.

I personally prefer 小孩 to 儿童 here, just 'cause it feels more generic a little less age specific. But that's a matter of word choice, so don't worry about it.

Do you think that 儿童 might be a more formal word? That's the impression that I've gotten. In most situations, it seems like the usual world for "child" is either 小孩 or 孩子 (with maybe 小孩 referring to younger children and 孩子 just being a more generic word for child?).

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Japanese

(Assuming the rice is already cooked)

(彼女は)両親のために子供にご飯をあげた。
(Kanojo wa) ryoushin no tame ni kodomo ni gohan o ageta.
[(kánod͡ʑo ɰᵝa) ɾjôːɕin no tamé ni kodomo ni góhãː o ageta]
(kanojo wa) ryoushin no tame ni kodomo ni gohan o age-ta
(3SG.F TOP) parent GEN purpose to child to rice OBJ give-PST.AFF
She gave the child rice for the parents.