Abstract
<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;" lang="EN-US">This paper has a twofold aim: to present a unified analysis of ditransitive constructions and transitivity alternations (dative/accusative alternations) in Spanish. As for the first phenomenon, and more concretely the purported existence in Spanish of something comparable to the English dative alternation, we will show the weaknesses of what we consider an analysis fruit of the tendency consisting of finding in the Romance area an exact reflex of English facts. Therefore, we will refute the hypothesis defended by several authors (Masullo 1992, Demonte 1995, Romero 1997, Cuervo 2003a,b) according to which Spanish ditransitive constructions with dative clitic doubling correspond to double object constructions (DOC), whereas non-doubled constructions correspond to the so-called prepositional constructions (PC), or <em>to-</em>dative, in English. After a careful and exhaustive examination of the data, we will argue that Spanish (and Catalan) ditransitive constructions instantiate DOC, whether they bear clitic doubling or not. &nbsp;Pronominalization facts in Catalan, a language which preserves prepositional clitics, will support this analysis, based on the postulation of an affectedness/possession restriction with gradual implementation. As for the second phenomenon of study, the existence of true case alternations in Spanish, we will argue that we are dealing with a kind of variation constrained by the same restriction (or a version of it) which acts in the realm of ditransitive predicates. Here, also, Catalan data will reveal crucial for our analysis. Crucially, we will show that what lies behind Spanish and Catalan dative/accusative alternation is an instance of Differential Indirect Object Marking (DIOM</span>
Highlights
The so-called Double Object Construction (DOC) was traditionally considered absent in Romance languages (Kayne 1984), though a few researchers claimed that it was present in Spanish (Masullo 1992, Demonte 1995, Romero 1997)
We propose that in languages like English the possession/affectedness relation constraining DOCs is highly strict and covers the possibility of receiving/possessing the object and the condition of animate, whereas in some Romance languages such as (European) Spanish and Catalan the constraint has a narrower scope and applies more laxly, meaning that it only requires some sort of affectedness of the dative DP,10 and it includes the possibility of affectedness by metaphor or synecdoche
We claim that the verbs under study enter true dative/accusative alternation, for several reasons, mainly: (i) the alternation involves a noticeable difference in meaning, (ii) monotransitivized objects behave as DOs rather than as accusative-marked standard IOs, (iii) the very same verbs display the alternation in Catalan, where clitics do not undergo case-confusing phenomena, and (iv) the alternation is not restricted to pronouns and extends to full DPs ( Differential Object Marking (DOM) in Spanish makes it difficult to distinguish a full DP IO from a full DP DO, we find other pieces of evidence: passivization of Spanish a-DPs with the verbs at study, occurrences of full DP DOs with the verbs at study in Catalan varieties without DOM and so on)
Summary
The absence of DCD in DOC can be accounted for by postulating a LowAppl Head which can remain phonologically null To this non-economical proposal, we argue that all constructions expressing a transfer of possession (successful or not, with a completely affected Goal or not) in Spanish, Catalan and French (and probably Italian) are DOC, whereas when a meaning other than this is expressed, e. The same holds for other sentences, like those in (7), which according to Demonte and Cuervo should not admit DCD because the
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