DIALECTS OF THE DATIVE SHIFT: A RE-EXAMINATION OF SĪBAWAYHI’S DISPUTE WITH THE NAḤWIYYŪN OVER DITRANSITIVE VERBS WITH TWO OBJECT PRONOUNS

David Wilmsen

Ditransitive verbs are accorded prominent treatment in the Arab gram- matical tradition. For the classical Arab grammarians, the presence of a verb with two object nouns in the accusative case would have been sufffijicient to spark their interest. Using the verb aʿṭā ‘to give’ as a model, they posed constructions such as aʿṭā ʿaliyy-an al-darāhim-a ‘he gave Ali the dirhams’ to illustrate the operation of case. The preference for nominal objects is to place the indirect object (the benefijiciary) before the direct object (the patient), where Ali is the benefijiciary of the act of giving dirhams, even though the two nominal objects may appear in either sequence.1 Traditional treatments of such verbs make no distinc- tion between the notional indirect object and the direct object, but this becomes important if one or both of the objects are represented by pro- nouns. As it happens, Arab grammar books, both ancient and modern, have little to say about pronominal objects. The reason for the classical grammarians’ apparent lack of interest may have been that such con- structions do not illustrate the accusative case of the two objects of the ditransitive verb, as pronominal objects in Arabic do not exhibit case. Yet the presence of object pronouns in ditransitive constructions afffects the ordering of the notional objects. With one pronominal object and one nominal, whichever of the objects is represented by the pronoun is afffijixed to the verb and, as a consequence, precedes the nominal object, regardless of which is the benefijiciary: aʿṭā-hu al-darāhim-a ‘he gave him the dirhams’ and aʿṭā-hā li- ʿaliyy-in ‘he gave them to Ali.’ In the fijirst instance, a double object construction is maintained, whereas in the second, a dative-like construction must be employed,2 and the ordering of the notional indirect and direct objects is reversed.

1 But see Soltan (2009: 537), Ryding (2005: 70–71), and Peled (1993: 207, fn. 2) for oppos- ing views of their permissible or preferred ordering. 2 There is, of course, no dative case in Arabic; the movement shown here is sometimes called a “dative shift.” 300 david wilmsen

When both objects are prepositional, three options are available: either a prepositional dative construction or one of two double object construc- tions may be formed. Sībawayhi3 does address pronominal objects of ditransitive verbs adducing both double object constructions: aʿṭā-hū-hā and aʿṭā-hu iyyā-hā, both apparently meaning ‘he gave-him-them.’ Accord- ing to Sībawayhi, the latter of the two options is preferable to avoid afffijix- ing two pronouns of the same person to the verb, which, because they are both of the third person, is awkward. A rarity (even an anachronism) in modern writing, a verb with two afffijixed object pronouns was evidently so even in Sībawayhi’s day.4 Sībawayhi himself acknowledged that the second pronoun was more often attached to the free object pronoun than it was to the verb. Gen- sler presents compelling reasons for regarding the afffijixing of two object pronouns to the verb as an archaic Semitic feature which may have been disappearing in Arabic by the time of the Qurʾānic revelation and was per- haps in an even greater stage of eclipse by the time Sībawayhi was writing more than a century and a half later.5 A critical consideration here, and one with which Sībawayhi and later grammarians appear little concerned, is the ordering of the patient and benefijiciary with respect to the verb, be they nominal or pronominal. For Sībawayhi also permits the opposite sequences aʿṭā-hā-hu and aʿṭā-hā iyyā-hu, stating that the ordering of the objects is unimportant so long as the proper sequencing of persons is preserved. Accordingly, in his reck- oning, the proper sequencing of the persons of object pronouns is that a 1st person pronoun precedes a 2nd person, which precedes a 3rd. Thus, Sībawayhi rejects as ill-formed the constructions aʿṭā-hū-ka ‘he gave-3rd- 2nd’ and aʿṭā-hū-ni ‘he gave-3rd-1st,6 wherein a 3rd person object pronoun precedes a 2nd person or 1st person pronoun. This against some of his contemporaries’ willingness to accept just such a violation of his pre- scribed sequence of attached object pronouns. Sībawayhi contends that these rival grammarians were for the sake of symmetry imposing on the language a regularity that did not actually exist. Against this, Sībawayhi prescribes the sequence aʿṭā-hu iyyā-ka ‘he gave-3rd iyyā-2nd,’ wherein the second pronoun in the sequence is detached from the verb and afffijixed

3 Sībawayhi, Kitāb 2, 362–3. 4 Diem (2002: 20). 5 Gensler (1998). 6 Following idem (1998: 278–280), I am deliberately glossing these examples with- out translating the object pronouns, precisely because the meaning of the utterances is ambiguous.