Possessively Construed Attitude Dative Constructions in Lebanese Arabic

Abstract

Possessive dative constructions—a subcategory of external possession constructions, similar but not identical to the English sentence She looked him in the eye—are a cross-linguistic phenomenon. These structures feature a nominal or pronominal element—in this case, him—that functions semantically as the possessor of a separate DP—eye—and syntactically as a dependent of the verb. Syntactic approaches to possessive dative constructions in such languages as Hebrew and German argue for a movement analysis in which the possessor starts out in the possessum DP before moving to a higher position. Semantic approaches to the same phenomenon in German and French, among other languages, analyze possessive dative constructions as instances of anaphoric binding; the dative undergoes first-merge outside the possessum DP and binds a variable in it. The present article documents and analyzes what appear to be instances of possessive dative constructions in Lebanese Arabic. I show that the possessive construal of the datives in these structures is not syntactically or semantically mediated, but rather pragmatically determined.