Theme–goal ditransitives and theme passivisation in British English dialects

Abstract

This paper makes two main claims about theme–goal ditransitive constructions (e.g. she gave it me) available in some British English dialects. First, such sentences are derived from ordinary double object constructions. Across a range of diagnostics, theme–goal ditransitives behave like true double object constructions and are plausibly analysed as neither prepositional datives nor a third variant with the theme first merged above the goal. The inverted object order in such sentences is derived via movement of the theme to an outer specifier of the same head hosting the goal. Second, this short object movement also feeds theme passivisation in double object constructions. On this approach, theme passive double object constructions do not involve locality-violating passivisation of the theme from its first-merged position below the goal; rather the theme raises to subject position from its intermediate position (McGinnis, M., 1998. Locality in A-movement. Ph.D. Dissertation. MIT). A challenge for this (or any) unified approach to theme–goal ditransitives and theme passives is the fact that for many speakers, different pronominality restrictions apply to objects in these two constructions. These restrictions are explained as a consequence of the way that Chain Reduction feeds post-syntactic leaning operations and prosody.