Abstract
This article presents an explanation for a cross-linguistic gap observed by Anna Siewierska: morphologically unmarked indirect objects may alternate with prepositional marking in what is sometimes called a ‘dative’ or ‘prepositional-dative’ ditransitive frame, but never with actual dative case marking. ‘Dative’, to the extent it alternates with accusative, is always expressed as a preposition. I show firstly that German, which has a robust dative case paradigm, also displays a double object alternation in which the erstwhile dative DP occurs in a prepositional phrase, meaning both accusative (in English) and dative (in German) indirect objects alternate with prepositional encoding. I construct an analysis in which the the indirect object may be generated as either a DP (which receives dative in German and accusative in English) or a PP in the same theta position. This characterization of the double object alternation does not admit an alternation between dative and accusative case on the indirect object, capturing Siewierska’s generalization. The analysis also extends to ‘symmetric’ passive languages, in which either object in the double object construction can be raised to subject in the passive. Some current perspectives on this phenomenon make such languages exceptions to Siewierska’s generalization, but not the analysis proposed here.
Highlights
IntroductionThis article seeks to explain a typological pattern observed by Siewierska (1998) to the effect that accusative encoding of an indirect object often alternates productively with prepositional encoding, as in the English double object alternation, it never
This article has investigated the source of a cross-linguistic gap noticed by Anna Siewierska, that no language displays an alternation between dative and accusative encoding of recipients in double object constructions
Both dative and accusative recipients alternate with periphrastic encoding marked by a preposition, in which case the recipient DP receives the case assigned by the preposition
Summary
This article seeks to explain a typological pattern observed by Siewierska (1998) to the effect that accusative encoding of an indirect object often alternates productively with prepositional encoding, as in the English double object alternation, it never. I add here based on an examination of German double object constructions that dative does not alternate with accusative, it does alternate with prepositional encoding, like accusative does in English. I present a syntactic analysis of this cross-linguistic gap that addresses a potential challenge to Siewierska’s generalization presented by object-symmetric languages, that is, languages in which either object may be raised to subject in passive constructions. The resulting analysis accommodates both symmetric languages as well as asymmetric languages of both the German type (with a dative indirect object) and the English type (with an accusative indirect object), and identifies the parameters that distinguish these types
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