The real-world colour of the dative alternation

Abstract

Accounts of the dative alternation which explain the occurrence (or non-occurrence of one) of the syntactic frames [NP V NP to/for NP] and [NP V NP NP] in terms of the semantics of the verbs involved usually assume what Pinker, S., 1989. Learnability and Cognition. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, calls Colour-Blind Conservatism, the assumption that most of a verb's conceptual representation is linguistically irrelevant, i.e. that the grammar is only sensitive to certain specific elements of meaning. In this paper, I will challenge this assumption, and instead propose that we can account for the dative alternation in terms of one general constraint on what makes a verb a possible verb, which operates over verb-specific conceptual information. Central to this proposal is the assumption that the different forms of dative verbs do not only encode different conceptual representations of events, but in particular that they also encode different perspectives on the event.