Talk:Dative shift

Benefactive Constructions
Dative Shift also applies to many benefactive constructions (arguments introduced by for). This is illustrated in the following examples: A) a. Kate baked a cake for her sister.

b. Kate baked her sister a cake.

B) a. Alice knitted a pair of socks for Uncle John.

b. Alice knitted Uncle John a pair of socks.

However, in other very similar cases, the Dative Shift rule does not apply. For example: A. a. Mary drove the car for her mother

b. *Mary drove her mother the car.

B. a. Aladdin polished the lamp for his wife.

b. *Aladdin polished his wife the lamp.

The failure of the Dative Shift rule application can be explained here by observing that Dative Shift only works on beneficiary arguments when they can be interpreted as receiving or acquiring possession of the patient or theme. Katedumbrell (talk) 01:28, 21 October 2013 (UTC) Kate Dumbrell

Rheanne- Dative shift shifts a verb out of dative form. Shifting a double-object construction (dative form) to a prepositional construction (dative shifted form) - The verb has a valency of 3 in dative form, and a valency of only 2 in the shifted.

A. a. [John] gave [Mary] [a present]

b. [John] gave [a present] [to Mary]

In (b), the non-dative shifted version, "gave" acts as a transitive verb, where the prepositional phrase "to Mary" is an adjunct, and therefore not an argument. Being dative shifted, the "give" in example (a) is now a ditransitive verb, requiring both the arguments "Mary" and "a present". This is the difference between the active, and passive "gave".

B. a. [John] gave [a present].

b. *[John] gave [Mary].

Rheanneb (talk) 02:22, 21 October 2013 (UTC) Rheanne Brownridge

Traditional Grammar
Traditional grammar suggests (as a “rule of thumb”) that only single syllable verbs can be in dative form. These verbs also must allow a recipient.

The last example demonstrates a single syllable verb that does not allow the dative form because it cannot take a recipient.

The reason for this lies with the origin of the verbs that allow dative form. Only Anglo-Saxon verbs (which are traditionally single syllable) allow dative form, whereas Latin verbs are (traditionally multisyllabic) do not allow the dative form).

Larson's Account of Dative Shift
Larson's theory takes the idea of asymmetry from Barss and Lasnik (1986) to derive a syntactic theory on dative shift.

Barss and Lasnik (1986) - Point out asymmetries in the behaviour of two objects in double object construction. Points out that anaphors must be c-commanded by their antecedents and therefore double object structures show an asymmetry with respect to the licensing of anaphors.

Larson proposes that both the oblique dative form and the double object construction form are surface representations.

First, Larson proposes (from Chomsky's 1955; 1975) that dative complement constructions John sent a letter to Mary involve an underlying form in which the verb and its indirect object make up a constituent that excludes the direct object. The assumption is that the correct surface form for the double object construction arises by movement of the verb to the empty V position. - Underlying Verb Phrase: a letter send to Mary - V-raising - Double Object Construction: send a letter to Mary Larson, next proposes to construe the dative double object relation transformationally. Unlike the dative complement construction, this had not yet been attempted before. Larson's challenge is to bring this derivation within the scope of established theoretical principles and to constrain it in appropriate. He describes the formation of double object construction as similar, transformationally, to the passive. Larson proposes that dative complement constructions John sent a letter to Mary involve an underlying form in which the verb and its indirect object make up a constituent that excludes the direct object. Mallorytonner (talk) 02:42, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Child Acquisition
Findings have shown that by the age of three, children demonstrate an understanding of the dative shift alternation once presented with both forms using novel verbs. Children are particularly likely to alternate the dative form into the shifted form.

i.e.: Children presented with "You pilked Petey the cup" (dative form, or DOC) and "You gorped the keys to Toby" (shifted form)were much more likely to then state "I pilked the cup to Petey" (shifting out of DOC) than "I gorped Toby the keys" (forming a dative construction). Rheanneb (talk) 04:07, 22 October 2013 (UTC)Rheanne

Real World Application
Larissa- (Syntactic Iconicity and Linguistic Freezes: The Human Dimension)Larissafeng (talk) 07:34, 21 October 2013 (UTC) Dative shift -> two possible orderings of “three-argument clauses” - There are semantic constraints on variation - Iconicity hypothesis?

(Analyzing Grammar: An Introduction) by Paul R. Kroeger (pg 61) Dative Shift can show the problem with the way the term “indirect object” is used in traditional grammar; using the examples below, we can see that the grammatical relation of Mary in the first sentence is not the same as in the second:

a) John gave Mary his old radio b) John gave his old radio to Mary

In both, “Mary’ is an indirect object; however, they have different grammatical properties.

Underlinked tag
This page was tagged in Nov of 2013 as not having enough links into other articles. To help with that, I've added a Valency and transitivity sidebar and category. Both are in the works right now, but soon they'll have lots of links. Hopefully that helps a little. Joeystanley (talk) 16:28, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Named references.
Hi there. I noticed this page had a really long list of references, but most of them were the same (one was cited 20 times, another 10 times). I've switched them all to named references, and used the  syntax for page numbers. It looks a lot better now. Anyway, just thought I'd let you know. Joeystanley (talk) 16:56, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

"Explain me the solution"
This is flagged with a question mark in the article, but sounds decidedly wrong to me (BrE speaker): I can only imagine it possibly occurring in World Englishes. Should it be asterisked instead? 86.179.247.69 (talk) 17:58, 4 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, I'm an American English speaker, and this definitely sounds wrong to me too. One would have to say "explain to me..."  A lot of non-native English speakers do say things like "explain me" though - particularly if they speak a language like German, which still retains a more robust dative case. -2003:CA:871F:F9E1:2D7E:7DD5:608F:2A01 (talk) 12:59, 25 October 2019 (UTC)

Error in spacing -- possible wikitext bug??
"The movement leaves a trace at the original V and creates a sequence of coindexed V positions". In my browser (latest Chrome release), the word pairs "traceat" and "coindexedV" are run together with no space, yet there is a space in the wikitext. What's going on? Equinox (talk) 23:03, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

Scope
Would be nice to get some info about other languages. I came here wondering how this works in Ergative-Absolutive languages, but unfortunately the page is just about English. – filelakeshoe (t / c) 09:41, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

Chinese
Ai & Chen (2008) propose that unlike English that allows both the dative construction and the double object construction with a goal or benefactive argument, Chinese only allows dative alternation for verbs that select a goal argument. This is shown by the ungrammaticality of sentences in Chinese with a benefactive argument, which is argued to be attached as an adjunct to VP, and therefore outside the domain of the verb. *Wo jian le Zhangsan yi-dong fangzi. I build perf. Zhangsan one-CL house Intended: ‘I built Zhangsan a house.’ Ai & Chen assert that dative shift requires the theme and the benefactive to be in the same domain, and so this syntactic constraint restricts dative alternation in Chinese. These individual differences suggest that the behaviour of Chinese verbs in dative alternation must be category-based.

Liu (2006) provides a classification of Chinese verbs into categories and argues that the verb classes have intrinsic restrictions on which of the three dative constructions the verb can occur in.

Chinese dative alternation as three distinct constructions: (gei "to give")

• gei object construction (GO)

• Vgei double object construction (VgeiDO)

• double object construction (DO)

1. GO construction: NP1 V NP2 gei NP3 Wo song -le yiben shu gei ta I give-as-present -PERF one-CL book to him 'I gave a book to him as a present.'

2. VgeiDO construction: NP1 Vgei NP2 NP3 (where gei forms a compound verb with the preceding verb) Wo song -gei ta yiben shu I give-as-present-to him one-CL book ‘I gave him a book as a present.’

3. DO construction: NP1 V NP2 NP3 Wo song ta yiben shu I give-as-present him one-CL book ‘I gave him a book as a present.’

Liu concludes that the 3-way dative alternation is limited in Chinese, allowed by only 5 possible verb classes, whose verbs crucially exhibit a core meaning of transfer. Sarahjch (talk) 07:03, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Editing & Expanding
As part of a linguistics assignment for our university syntax class, my group and I will be making some edits to the existing Dative Shift page as well as adding some more information on Dative Shift in languages other than English, any feedback is welcome! Kaitlynkuhn (talk) 16:46, 9 April 2019 (UTC)