We Have a New Site!
With the help of your donations we have been making good progress on designing and launching our new website! Check it out at https://linguistlist.org/!***We are still in our beta stages for the new site--if you have any feedback, be sure to let us know at webdevlinguistlist.org***
Academic Paper |
|
|
|
|
| Title: | The English dative alternation: The case for verb sensitivity |
| Author: | Malka Rappaport Hovav |
| Email: | click here TO access email |
| Institution: | Hebrew University of Jerusalem |
| Author: | Beth Levin |
| Email: | click here TO access email |
| Homepage: | http://www-csli.stanford.edu/~beth/ |
| Institution: | Stanford University |
| Linguistic Field: | Semantics |
| Subject Language: |
English
|
| Abstract: | We challenge the predominant view of the English dative alternation, which takes all alternating verbs to have two meanings: a caused possession meaning realized by the double object variant and a caused motion meaning realized by the to variant. Instead, we argue that verbs like give and sell only have a caused possession meaning, while verbs like throw and send have both caused motion and caused possession meanings. We show that the caused possession meaning may be realized by both variants. Concomitantly, we argue that verbs like give, even in the to variant, lack a conceptual path constituent, and instead have a caused possession meaning which can be understood as the bringing about of a 'have' relation. We reassess evidence for alternative approaches adduced from inference patterns and verb–argument combinations and demonstrate how our verb-sensitive analysis, when combined with an account of variant choice, provides a more insightful explanation of this data, while having wider coverage. Our investigation affirms proposals that a verb's own meaning plays a key role in determining its argument realization options. To conclude, we consider the crosslinguistic implications of our study, attempting to explain why so many languages lack a true dative alternation. |
|
|
|
|
This article appears IN Journal of Linguistics Vol. 44, Issue 1. |
|
Add a new paper
Return to Academic Papers main page Return to Directory of Linguists main page |
|
|
About LINGUIST
|
Contact Us
|
Report Broken Link
While the LINGUIST List makes every effort to ensure the linguistic relevance of sites listed on its pages, it cannot vouch for their contents. |