Cross-linguistic and Cross-categorial variation of datives

Abstract

This paper investigates goal and beneficiary arguments introduced by the preposition se in Greek. I argue that dative arguments introduced by se occur in double object Beneficiary and goal constructions and in prepositional goal ditransitives, unlike to in English which is limited to prepositional goal constructions. I account for this difference between Greek and English in terms of differences between se and to with respect to the feature DIRECTION/PATH and the related function of resultativity. I furthermore compare Greek se-datives to arguments introduced by comparable prepositions in Japanese, French and Spanish. I demonstrate that the meaning, distribution and syntactic properties of a-datives in French are very similar to those displayed by se-datives, except that the former behave like DPs and the latter like PPs under co-ordination. This leads me to conclude that the category of indirect objects is orthogonal to their distribution in ditransitives. Indirect object DPs may occur in so called ‘prepositional ditransitives’ and, conv rsely, indirect object PPs are allowed to surface in double object constructions. The crucial property of the double object construction is the fact that the indirect object is introduced by a light applicative head and the direct object is part of the domain headed by the verbal root (Marantz 1993). This extra layer of functional structure is missing in so called ‘prepositional ditransitives’ where indirect and direct objects are both introduced at the root level.