Functions of Language

Functions of Language volume 14 number 1 2007 Editors J. Lachlan Mackenzie Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Anne-Marie Simon-Vandenbergen Ghent University Geoff Thompson University of Liverpool Reviews Editor Christopher S. Butler University of Wales Swansea Honorary Editor M.A.K. Halliday Emeritus University of Sydney Managing Editor Miriam Taverniers Ghent University John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam / Philadelphia 2nd proofs Special issue Functions of Ditransitivity Language Edited by Anna Siewierska and Willem Hollmann Editorial Board Elizabeth Couper-Kuhlen J.R. Martin University of Potsdam University of Sydney John W. Du Bois Jan Nuyts University of California, Santa Barbara University of Antwerp Robin P. Fawcett Anna Siewierska University of Wales, Cardiff University of Lancaster Eva Hajičová Michael Silverstein Charles University Prague University of Chicago Mike Hannay Gerard J. Steen Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Ruqaiya Hasan Michael Stubbs Macquarie University University of Trier Martin Haspelmath John R. Taylor Max Planck Institut Leipzig University of Otago Susan Hunston Robert D. Van Valin Jr. University of Birmingham University at Buffalo Ronald W. Langacker Anna Wierzbicka UCSD Australian National University Ricardo Mairal Usón National University of Distance Learning, Madrid 2nd proofs Table of contents Articles Introduction Anna Siewierska & Willem Hollmann The semantic and lexical range of the ditransitive construction in the history of (North) Germanic 9 Jóhanna Barðdal I gave it him — On the motivation of the ‘alternative double object construction’ in varieties of British English 3 Volker Gast From language-specific constraints to implicational universals: a cognitive-typological view of the dative alternation 57 Willem Hollmann Ditransitive alignment splits and inverse alignment 79 Martin Haspelmath Bound person forms in ditransitive clauses revisited 03 Anna Siewierska & Dik Bakker Getting three out of two: The development of a three-participant construction in Oceanic languages 27 Jae Jung Song On the encoding of transitivity-related features on the indirect object 49 Seppo Kittilä Book Review Stephan Kepser, Marga Reis (eds.) Linguistic Evidence: Empirical, Theoretical, and Computational Perspectives. Mouton de Gruyter 2005. Reviewed by Gerard Steen 65 2nd proofs Introduction Anna Siewierska & Willem Hollmann Lancaster University . Background to this special issue: past and present interest in ditransitive constructions Of the three major transitivity types, intransitive, transitive and ditransitive, ditransitive constructions, understood as involving a verb which requires three obligatory arguments, an Agent, Theme and Recipient/Beneficiary, are the most complex, structurally, semantically and pragmatically. They are also less common than either transitive or intransitive constructions within languages, as well as across languages. Languages always have far fewer ditransitive verbs than transitive or intransitive ones. In fact many languages have only a handful of ditransitive verbs, some only one corresponding to give. There are even languages which are seen to lack ditransitive verbs altogether, ditransitive meanings being expressed via serial verb constructions. Two cases in point are Maybrat, a Papuan language of Irian Jaya (Dol 1999:82, 164) and Labu, an Austronesian language of Papua New Guinea (Siegel 1984:97, 117). Arguably as a consequence of the above, ditransitive constructions are relatively under-investigated as compared to both intransitive and transitive ones. While the last decades have seen many publications on various aspects of ditransitive constructions, in the formal literature (e.g. Marantz 1984; Larson 1988; Bresnan & Moshi 1990; den Dikken 1995; Collins and Thráinsson 1996; McCawley 1998: 169, 318), the functional-typological literature (e.g. Plank 1984; Dryer 1986; Newman 1997; Polinsky 1998; Siewierska 1998; Haspelmath 2004), and in cognitive linguistics (e.g. Goldberg 1992, 1995, 2002; Croft 2003), there is still much about the form and function of these constructions, their syntactic properties, cross-linguistic realizations, diachronic development and mental representation that needs to be explored. This special issue seeks to fill in some of the gaps in our knowledge of ditransitive constructions by providing seven articles dealing with synchronic and diachronic facets of these constructions in a variety of languages. All seven articles 2nd proofs Functions of Language 14:1 (2007), –7. issn 0929–998X / e-issn 1569–9765 © John Benjamins Publishing Company 2 Anna Siewierska & Willem Hollmann Introduction 3 are firmly couched in the functional-cognitive approach to language analysis and order which is available in some dialects, especially if both objects are pronouns. as such are concerned not solely with matters of structure but rather with how This non-canonical order is traced back to Old English and is explained with structure interacts — and is motivated by — semantic-pragmatic and cognitive reference to the frequency of the pattern <finite verb + accusative pronoun> as factors. Special attention is devoted by several of the contributors to the impact of against <finite verb + dative pronoun>. The former pattern is more frequent be- frequency on the structure of ditransitive constructions (see the articles by Gast, cause most transitive clauses are monotransitive, and monotransitive objects are Haspelmath, Hollmann, Siewierska & Bakker) as conceived of within the usage- more commonly realised as accusatives than as datives. Gast further shows that based model of language (Barlow & Kemmer 2000; Bybee 1985; Bybee & Hopper the stylistic principle of end weight is likewise found to favour the pronominal 2001; Croft 2000; Langacker 1987). Frequency is also seen to bear on the diachro- Theme-Recipient order. His explanation of the English facts is supported by the ny of ditransitive constructions, different aspects of which are studied within all fact that in German, a V2 language just like Old English, the same syntactic and the contributions, albeit implicitly in one case (Kittilä). ‘pattern frequency’ circumstances obtain — and the same Theme-Recipient pat- The origins of this special issue lie in a workshop on ditransitives, organised tern is found. by the authors of this introduction at the 6th Biennial Meeting of the Associa- In ‘From language-specific constraints to implicational universals: a cognitive- tion for Linguistic Typology, 21–25 July 2005 in Padang, Indonesia. Not surpris- typological view of the dative alternation’, Willem Hollmann asks whether the ingly therefore, all the articles aim to offer a typological perspective, although the possibility of a verb occurring in the double-object, as opposed to prepositional, means of achieving this range from carrying out fairly narrow language-internal construction can be predicted. This issue has of course been discussed before, but or language-family internal analyses (see Barðdal, Gast, Hollmann and Song) to Hollmann argues that the answers traditionally given tend to work well only for one broad typological surveys (see Haspelmath, Kittilä and Siewierska & Bakker). It language and are too specific to be applicable across languages (that is, languages needs to be emphasized that the concern with cross-linguistic validity is not only that have the alternation). Observing a parallel between the semantics-pragmatics due to the focus of the conference where most of the articles were first presented, of dative and passive constructions, and drawing on Croft’s (2001) insight that but reflects the authors’ conviction that such a broad, functional-typological per- typological universals may be discovered by careful intralinguistic analysis, the spective may help explain issues in a way that a purely language-internal investiga- author analyses a corpus of English active vs. passive ditransitive constructions. tion never could. He finds that some semantic parameters that have been suggested in previous scholarship (e.g. volitionality of the Agent) do indeed play a role in passivisability — and therefore dativisability — while others (e.g. volitionality of the Recipient) 2. The studies in this issue do not. In addition, observing that the double-object construction is more com- pact than the prepositional variant, he suggests that a high token frequency may Jóhanna Barðdal’s study, ‘The semantic and lexical range of the ditransitive con- also contribute to a verb’s dativisability, which has not been suggested elsewhere. struction in the history of (North) Germanic’ looks at present-day and histori- The latter suggestion constitutes a clear theoretical bridge with the article by Gast cal data from Icelandic, archaic Swedish and Norwegian dialects, English and and further contributions to this issue that consider effects of frequency. German. The author offers a detailed comparison of these cognate languages in Martin Haspelmath’s ‘Ditransitive alignment splits and inverse alignment’ is terms of the lexical semantics of the predicates that may occur in the ditransitive the most outspokenly frequency-driven article included here. Taking as a point of construction with a Dative Recipient/Benefactive and an Accusative Theme. This departure the classification of basic ditransitive alignment patterns into the indi- comparison allows her to reconstruct the semantic structure of the construction in rective, neutral and secundative alignment types (Haspelmath 2004), the author the common Germanic

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