1.1 Two Broad Classes of Dative Verbs 1 The Dative Alternation and Real English 3 (i) x causes y to have z (possessive) (ii) x causes z to go to/be at y (allative) (Green 1974, Oehrle 1976, Pinker 1989, Krifka 2001, Levin and Rappaport Hovav 2002) (i) possessive, e.g. give, lend: I think we ve given our teachers an almost impossible job. [Linguistics 128/228: Real English: The Syntax of Language Use] (ii) allative, e.g. send, throw: And we can send mail messages to each other, which is good enough. [examples from the parsed Switchboard corpus] 1.2 The Monosemy Hypothesis 2 1 The Dative Alternation Repetitions with alternating forms: You don t know how difficult it is to find something which will please everybody especially the men. Why not just give them cheques? I asked. You can t give cheques to people. It would be insulting. a a Davidse (1996a: 291), from Graham Greene (1980) Doctor Fischer of Geneva or the Bomb Party. London: The Bodley Head) 4 Levin and Rappaport Hovav 2002: a Recipients universally can be viewed both as possessors and as animate goals: possessors expressed by means of a core grammatical function (the primary, or first NP, object in English; dative case marking in many other languages) animate goals expressed by means of an oblique grammatical function (a to-prepositional object in English; allative or locative case or adpositional marking in many other languages) In English, recipient arguments may be conveyed by either the core or the oblique expression type, without a change of the lexical meaning of the verb. a Beth Levin and Malka Rappaport Hovav, 2002, What Alternates in the Dative Alternation?, paper presented at RRG2002. On-line, Stanford University: http://wwwcsli.stanford.edu/ beth/.
1.3 Some Allative PPs Are Not Recipients... 5 A purely spatial goal Recipient (PP-DIR in Switchboard): How do you feel about sending an elderly family member (PP-DIR to a nursing home)? (nonalternating) An animate goal Recipient (PP-DTV in Switchboard): I was thinking about it after I got off the phone, that I really wish that there was some way to send a message (PP-DTV to people) about child abuse and things like that. (alternating)... Some Possessive NPs Are Not Recipients 7 Pinker (1989: 103) on verbs of continous imparting of force (carry, pull, push, schlep): Though they are cognitively construable as resulting in a change of possession (if the object is pushed over to a person with the intent of giving it to him), they are not linguistically construable as such because the licensing linguistic rule is not stated broadly enough to apply to them. Our evidence shows that they are linguistically construable as changes of possession, and are in current use. Levin and Rappaport Hovav 2002: Smith envied Jones his good fortune. *Smith envied his good fortune to Jones. Representatives of the starred types of examples found in current use: 1.4 Evidence for Polysemy? Verbs of Continuous Imparting of Force : Karen spoke with Gretchen about the procedure for registering a complaint, and hand-carried her a form, but Gretchen never completed it. [2 June 1999, Nampa Controversy Summary - Idaho Library Association] www.idaholibraries.org/nampa.controversy.summary.htm 6 Pinker (1989: 110 111), Krifka (2001): verbs of instantaneous imparting of force in some manner causing ballistic motion : Lafleur throws/tosses/flips/slaps/kicks/pokes/flings/blasts him the puck; he shoots, he scores! verbs of continuous imparting of force in some manner causing accompanied motion : *I carried/pulled/pushed/schlepped/lifted/lowered/hauled John the box. 8 Later in the day I was winding my way up a cove, to see a woman I knew.... I carried her a bundle of silver sage, sent to her by another friend, and the bad news that the sweat she had planned had been canceled. www.azstarnet.com/ pattys/cs0998/09 22.txt As Player A pushed him the chips, all hell broke loose at the table. (www.cardplayer.com/?sec=afeature&art id=165) Nothing like heart burn food. I have the tums. Nick joked. He pulled himself a steaming piece of the pie. Thanks for being here. (www.realityfanfiction.addr.com/storm3.html) Therefore, when he got to purgatory, Buddha lowered him the silver thread of a spider as his last chance for salvation. (www.inch.com/ fujimura/imofgrmain.htm) Well... it started like this... Shinbo explained while Sumomo dragged him a can of beer and opened it for him, We were having dinner together and... (www.angelfire.com/wa2/bozyby/hold1.html)
1.5 Why Do Some Allative Verbs Alternate More Easily than Others? 9 Grammaticality judgments may be systematically biased by the probability of similar descriptions of the event types depicted by the examples. To elaborate, transfers of possession may occur in many ways. In sports like hockey, possession of the puck can take place by means of a number of sudden actions in play, and there is much varied discourse about it. In the world more generally, or at least in present-day American life, if a person accompanies and holds, clings to, or otherwise stays in contact with a possession, it seems to us less likely that a transfer of possession is going on, and in many cases there is probably much less talk about it than about possession of the ball or puck or whatever in sports. Carrying people things as a transfer of possession is surely more common in situations where walking is a major mode of transportation. The above examples are from present-day English, but many examples of carry with dative NP can be found in depictions of life in rural areas, often predating the rise of the automobile. 11 For the same reasons, pushing is probably less likely to be thought of as a mode of transferring possession than carrying, with pulling perhaps less so, and lowering and dragging the least. In sum, linguistic intuitions in judging grammaticality may reflect what is socially entrenched and typical as much as what is linguistically possible. a a See also Durie (1997) for a similar observation on serial verb constructions. pre-automotive uses of ditransitive carry Aurie and Pearl went to Humboldt that afternoon. I went back to Mrs. Kate s to carry her some mustard salad. (www.rootsweb.com/ tngibson/bios/mayfield1894.htm [from Fidelia Mayfield Diary 1892]) 1.6 Evidence for Polysemy? Verbs of Manner of Speaking : 10 This evening she was late starting dinner because her second granddaughter has a cold, and she had to carry her some pepper sauce for her cough. (www.fictionwise.com/ebooks/ebook842.htm [from a novel set in the Civil War period]) Polly had been sick and Sara wanted to carry her some food. (www.lrwma.com/happenings/happenings1.htm [from Happenings around Leatherwood Mountain in the Early 1900s]) Go, my dear, and see how thy grandmamma does, for I hear she has been very ill; carry her a custard and this little pot of butter. (www.azstarnet.com/reading/reading22.html [Little Red Riding Hood]) 12 Pinker (1989), Levin (1993), Krifka (2001), inter alia: verbs of instrument of communication: Susan cabled/emailed/faxed/phoned/telegraphed/... Rachel the news verbs of manner of speaking: *Susan whispered/yelled/mumbled/barked/muttered... Rachel the news.
Representatives of the starred types of examples found in current use: I think he was poking fun at the charges that Blackmore has been making that he chronically forgets words - he went over to Jon Lord during Smoke and seemed to be getting Jon to yell him the words!! www.thehighwaystar.com/reviews/namerica/asbuandr.htm I still can t forget their mockery and laughter when they heard my question. Finally a kind few (three to be exact) came forward and whispered me the answer. www.bangla2000.com/mboard/vbulletin.asp?id=1462 Where the context motivates a special manner of speaking to convey a message to someone, a manner of speaking verb can be used with a dative NP argument. Thus the previous [yell NP NP] example depicts communicating over the sounds of musical performance; the following one describes communicating above the road noise of a big truck: 13 You once muttered me a poem you had written free on the breeze pub136.ezboard.com/ fsaltydreamsbook2frm5.showmessage?topicid=278.topic Shooting the Urasian a surprised look, she muttered him a hurried apology as well before skirting down the hall. www.geocities.com/cassiopeia sc/fanfiction/findthemselves.html Hi baby. Wade says as he stretches. You just mumble him an answer. You were comfy on that soft leather couch. Besides... www.nsyncbitches.com/thunder/fic/break.htm 15 The guy just yelled above the road, and all I had to do was yell back, and we relaxed. And he balled that thing clear to Iowa City and yelled me the funniest stories about how he got around the law in every town that had an unfair speed limit, saying over and over again, Them goddam cops can t put no flies on my ass! [On the Road. Jack Kerouac, 1955] www.mshs.univ-poitiers.fr/saes/agreg/agrehp/ehp01/ehp01h/ EHP01H1.RTF The shepherd-dogs, guardians of the flocks, barked him a welcome, and the sheep bleated and the lambs pattered round him. www.litrix.com/raintr/raint009.htm 1.7 Why Do Some Verbs of Communication Alternate More Easily than Others? 14 The activities of cabling, emailing, faxing, phoning, telegraphing, and the like almost always involve communication that is transfers of the possession of information. In contrast, the activities of whispering, yelling, mumbling, barking, muttering, and the like are more often, to varying degrees, noncommunicative. When used intransitively and with certain directional phrases, the mannerof-speaking verbs describe the physical characteristics of a sound rather than an intended act of communication by speech (Zwicky 1971: 225, 226): a He whispered/yelled/mumbled/barked/muttered (but he wasn t saying anything). He whispered/yelled/mumbled/barked/muttered at us/in our direction. (In fact, a tgrep query of the Switchboard corpus yielded 17 occurrences of these five verbs, of which 12 are noncommunicative, 3 are quasi-communicative (like yelling for help ), and only 2 have complements which denote the products of a speech act.) a Arnold Zwicky, 1971, In a Manner of Speaking, Linguistic Inquiry 2: 223 233. 16 Granted that the uses of manner of speaking verbs are probably disproportionately describing noncommunicative activities, why should their communicative uses favor the dative PP (the allative type expression) over the dative NP (the possessive type expression)? The directional at, toward phrases that modify manner of speaking verbs are in complementary distribution with the to PPs (Zwicky 1971: 226), suggesting that these verbs when used communicatively may be basically of the allative type lexical semantics: He whispered/yelled/mumbled/barked/muttered at us/in our direction (*to John).
17 2 A Corpus Study of the Dative Alternation Two motivations: Grammaticality judgments may be systematically biased by the probability of similar descriptions of the event types depicted by the examples. The statistical structure of language use may reveal generalizations that lie beneath the threshold of grammaticality judgments. 19 Initial finding. There is a harmonic alignment of person with dative argument type: 1st and 2nd persons preferably align with dative NP, 3rd person preferably aligns with dative PP. In the Switchboard corpus, dative NPs are more frequent than dative PPs. 85% (n=577) of all the dative arguments collected are expressed as dative NPs, and only 15% (n=104) as dative PPs. If we split up dative arguments by person, we find that the distribution of 1st and 2nd persons is skewed toward dative NPs while the distribution of third persons is skewed toward dative PPs: COMPARISON #1: person of dative argument by syntactic type, all dative verbs: Dative NP Dative PP 1st, 2nd 341 (94%) 21 (6%) 362 (100%) 3rd 236 (74%) 83 (26%) 319 (100%) 577 (85%) 104 (15%) 681 (100%) P(O E) = 0.000000 (Fisher s exact test) 18 2.1 Working Hypotheses: the same properties of information structure, animacy, and length that distinguish subjects from objects also distinguish the dative NP from the dative PP in English a the same distributions of properties (such as pronominality, person) that are categorical in some languages are gradient in other languages, including English b 20 COMPARISON #1: person of dative argument by syntactic type Queries for all active dative verbs with dative arguments in situ by local/nonlocal person: tgrep -itan VP < ( (NP < (PRP < /ˆme/ /ˆmyself/ /ˆyou$/ /ˆyoursel/ /ˆus/ /ˆourselves/ )) $.. NP ) \ > 12_recips_in_NP-NP_context tgrep -itan VP < NP < (PP-DTV < (NP < (PRP < /ˆme/ /ˆmyself/ /ˆyou$/ /ˆyoursel/ /ˆus/ /ˆourselves/ ))) \ > 12_recips_in_NP-PP_context a Givon 1984, Thompson 1990, 1994, Hawkins 1994, Collins 1995, Davidse 1996a,b, Wasow 1997, 2002, Arnold et al. 2000, Snyder 2001). Some non-corpus studies also provide supporting evidence (Ransom 1979, Erteshik-Shir 1979, Creider 1979). b Givón 1979, Estival and Myhill 1988, Dik 1997, Bresnan, Dingare, and Manning 2001, Dingare 2001, Haspelmath in press /ˆyou$/ - excludes genitive your(s) -i - indexes items; enables counts of # -t - strips parse brackets -a - finds all occurrences in same line -n - prints outputs on same line - backquote allows printing dat args only \ - newline character extends shell command beyond end of quoted sequence...
21 Weight or length effects? Since local person pronouns are all short while nonlocal person NPs are longer on average, the weight or length effect would be in the same direction as the person effect: the shorter would tend to precede the longer. That would bias local-person Recipients toward dative NP position adjacent to the verb and away from dative PP position following the often heavier or longer Themes. Would weight be sufficient to explain the apparent harmonic alignment effects observed above? We can answer this question by comparing the proportions of 1st and 2nd person recipients ( me, you, us ) to third person pronoun recipients ( him, her, it, them ) in dative NP and dative PP positions when the theme arguments are restricted to one word in length. Then the relative length of the dative argument to the theme remains the same, and only person varies. 23 COMPARISON #2: person of dative pronoun argument by syntactic type, holding length of Theme argument constant at 1 word Queries controlling for length of Theme argument: tgrep -itan VP < ( (NP < (PRP < /ˆme/ /ˆmyself/ /ˆyou$/ /ˆyoursel/ /ˆus/ /ˆourselves/ )) $.. NP <1!<2 ) \ > 1st2ndPronoun_recips_in_NP-NP_context tgrep -itan VP < (NP <1!<2 ) < (PP-DTV < (NP < (PRP < /ˆme/ /ˆyou$/ /ˆyoursel/ /ˆus/ /ˆmyself/ /ˆourselves/ ))) \ > 1st2ndPronoun_recips_in_NP-PP_context Note: NP <1!<2 restricts search to NPs having any node as first daughter and no node as second daughter; outputs were hand-checked to remove single daughter Themes that contain more than one word (e.g. seven point five billion ). COMPARISON #2: person of dative pronoun argument by syntactic type, holding length of Theme argument constant at 1 word 22 Dative NP Dative PP 1st, 2nd 78 (82%) 17(18%) 95 (100%) 3rd 24 (65%) 13 (35%) 37 (100%) 102 (77%) 30 (23%) 132 (100%) P(O E) = 0.03163211 (Fisher s exact test) We see that when the length of the Theme argument is held constant at one word, there is still a preference to place 1st and 2nd person pronouns in dative NP position over dative PP position, compared with 3rd person pronouns. Therefore, the harmonic alignment of person with dative argument type is not fully explained as a weight or length effect.