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Ditransitive verb
View on WikipediaThis article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations. (November 2010) |
| Transitivity and valency |
|---|
| Transitivity |
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Intransitive verb Transitive verb Ambitransitive verb |
| Valency |
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Impersonal (Avalent) Intransitive verb (Monovalent) Monotransitive (Divalent) Ditransitive verb (Trivalent) Tritransitive verb (Quadrivalent) |
| Valence increasing |
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Causative Applicative Benefactive Dative shift |
| Valence decreasing |
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Passive Antipassive Impersonal passive |
| Reflexives and reciprocals |
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Reflexive pronoun Reflexive verb Reciprocal construction Reciprocal pronoun |
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In grammar, a ditransitive (or bitransitive) verb is a transitive verb whose contextual use corresponds to a subject and two objects which refer to a theme and a recipient. According to certain linguistics considerations, these objects may be called direct and indirect, or primary and secondary. This is in contrast to monotransitive verbs, whose contextual use corresponds to only one object.
In languages which mark grammatical case, it is common to differentiate the objects of a ditransitive verb using, for example, the accusative case for the direct object, and the dative case for the indirect object (but this morphological alignment is not unique; see below). In languages without morphological case (such as English for the most part) the objects are distinguished by word order or context.
In English
[edit]English has a number of generally ditransitive verbs, such as give, grant, and tell and many transitive verbs that can take an additional argument (commonly a beneficiary or target of the action), such as pass, read, bake, etc.:
- He gave Mary ten dollars.
- He passed Paul the ball.
- Jean read him the books.
- She is baking him a cake.
- I am mailing Sam some lemons.
Alternatively, English grammar allows for these sentences to be written with a preposition (to or for): (See also Dative shift)
- He gave ten dollars to Mary.
- He passed the ball to Paul.
- Jean read the books to/for him.
- She is baking a cake for him.
- I am mailing some lemons to Sam., etc.
The latter form is grammatically correct in every case, but in some dialects the former (without a preposition) is considered ungrammatical, or at least unnatural-sounding, when the direct object is a pronoun (as in He gave me it or He gave Fred it).
Sometimes one of the forms is perceived as wrong for idiosyncratic reasons (idioms tend to be fixed in form) or the verb simply dictates one of the patterns and excludes the other:
- *Give a break to me (grammatical, but always phrased Give me a break)
- *He introduced Susan his brother (usually phrased He introduced his brother to Susan)
In certain dialects of English, many verbs not normally treated as ditransitive are allowed to take a second object that shows a beneficiary, generally of an action performed for oneself.
- Let's catch ourselves some fish (which might also be phrased Let's catch some fish for ourselves[citation needed])
This construction could also be an extension of a reflexive construction.
In addition, certain ditransitive verbs can also act as monotransitive verbs:[1]
- "David told a story to the children" – Ditransitive
- "David told a story – Monotransitive
Passive voice
[edit]Many ditransitive verbs have a passive voice form which can take a direct object. Contrast the active and two forms of the passive:
Active:
- Jean gave the books to him.
- Jean gave him the books.
Passive:
- The books were given to him by Jean.
- He was given the books by Jean.
Not all languages have a passive voice, and some that do have one (e.g. Polish) do not allow the indirect object of a ditransitive verb to be promoted to subject by passivization, as English does. In others like Dutch a passivization is possible but requires a different auxiliary: "krijgen" instead of "worden".
E.g. schenken means "to donate, to give":
- Active: Jan schonk hem de boeken – John donated the books to him.
- Passive: De boeken werden door Jan aan hem geschonken – The books were donated to him by John.
- Pseudo-passive: Hij kreeg de boeken door Jan geschonken – He got the books donated [to him] by John.
Attributive ditransitive verbs
[edit]Another category of ditransitive verb is the attributive ditransitive verb in which the two objects are semantically an entity and a quality, a source and a result, etc. These verbs attribute one object to the other. In English, make, name, appoint, consider, turn into and others are examples:
- The state of New York made Hillary Clinton a Senator.
- I will name him Galahad.
The first object is a direct object. The second object is an object complement.[2][3]
Attributive ditransitive verbs are also referred to as resultative verbs.[4]
Morphosyntactic alignment
[edit]The morphosyntactic alignment between arguments of monotransitive and ditransitive verbs is explained below. If the three arguments of a typical ditransitive verb are labeled D (for Donor; the subject of a verb like "to give" in English), T (for Theme; normally the direct object of ditransitive verb in English) and R (for Recipient, normally the indirect object in English), these can be aligned with the Agent and Patient of monotransitive verbs and the Subject of intransitive verbs in several ways, which are not predicted by whether the language is nominative–accusative, ergative–absolutive, or active–stative. Donor is always or nearly always in the same case as Agent, but different languages equate the other arguments in different ways:[citation needed]
- Indirective languages: D = A, T = P, with a third case for R
- Secundative languages: D = A, R = P (the 'primary object'), with a third case for T (the 'secondary object')
- Neutral or double-object languages: D = A, T = R = P
- Split-P languages: D = A, some monotransitive clauses have P = T, others have P = R
See also
[edit]Notes
[edit]- ^ "Ditransitive Verbs @ The Internet Grammar of English". Archived from the original on 2013-10-04. Retrieved 2013-10-03.
- ^ Hopper, Paul J. 1999. A short course in grammar. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
- ^ Huddleston, Rodney. 1984. Introduction to the grammar of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- ^ Fordyce-Ruff, Tenielle. 2015. Beyond the basics: Transitive, intransitive, ditransitive and ambitransitive verbs. Advocate. Online: https://commons.cu-portland.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1015&context=lawfaculty[permanent dead link]
References
[edit]- Cheng, L. L.-S., Huang, C.-T. J., Audrey, Y.-H., & Tang, C.-C. J. (1999). Hoo, hoo, hoo: Syntax of the causative, dative, and passive constructions in Taiwanese. Journal of Chinese Linguistics Monograph Series, 14, 146–203.
- Lee, Hui-chi. (2011). Double object construction in Hainan Min. Language and Linguistics, 12(3), 501–527.
- Haspelmath, Martin. (2005). Argument marking in ditransitive alignment types Archived 2020-02-21 at the Wayback Machine. Linguistic Discovery, 3(1), 1–21.
- Haspelmath, Martin. (2008). Ditransitive Constructions: Towards a New Role and Reference Grammar? In R. D. Van Valin (Ed.), Investigations of the Syntax–Semantics–Pragmatics Interface (pp. 75–100). John Benjamins.
- Haspelmath, Martin. (2013). Ditransitive Constructions: The Verb 'Give'. In M. S. Dryer & M. Haspelmath (Eds.), The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Retrieved from http://wals.info/chapter/105
- Haspelmath, Martin. (2015). Ditransitive constructions. Annual Review of Linguistics, 1, 19–41.
- Huang, Chu-Ren & Ahrens, Kathleen. (1999). The function and category of GEI in Mandarin ditransitive constructions. Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 27(2), 1–26.
- Huang, Han-Chun. (2012). Dative Constructions in Hakka: A Constructional Perspective. Journal of Hakka Studies, 5(1), 39–72.
- Liu, Feng-hsi. (2006). Dative Constructions in Chinese. Language and Linguistics, 7(4), 863–904.
- Malchukov, A., Haspelmath, M., & Comrie, B. (2010). Ditransitive constructions: A typological overview. In A. Malchukov, M. Haspelmath, & B. Comrie (Eds.), Studies in Ditransitive Constructions: A Comparative Handbook (pp. 1–64). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
- Person, Anna Siewierska (Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics, 2004)
- Paul, Waltraud & Whitman, John. (2010). Applicative structure and Mandarin ditransitives. In M. Duguine, S. Huidobro, & N. Madariaga (Eds.), Argument Structure and Syntactic Relations: A cross-linguistic perspective (pp. 261–282). John Benjamins.
- 张美兰 (Zhang Mei-Lan). (2014). 汉语双宾语结构:句法及其语义的历时研究. Beijing: Tsinghua University Press (清华大学出版社).
Ditransitive verb
View on GrokipediaDefinition and Basics
Core Definition
A ditransitive verb is a transitive verb that requires two internal arguments in addition to the subject to express a complete proposition, typically involving the transfer or communication of an entity from an agent to a recipient.[3] These verbs form part of a verb's basic valence, distinguishing them from other verb classes by their subcategorization for both a direct object and an indirect object.[4] The term "ditransitive" was first recorded in the 1960s.[5] In contrast to intransitive verbs, which require no objects, and monotransitive verbs, which take a single object, ditransitive verbs necessitate two objects to fulfill their semantic and syntactic requirements.[4] Semantically, ditransitive verbs assign specific theta roles to their arguments: the subject typically receives the agent role as the initiator of the action; the indirect object is assigned the goal or recipient role, indicating the endpoint or beneficiary of the transfer; and the direct object bears the theme role, representing the entity affected or moved.[3] These roles underpin the verb's core meaning, often involving caused possession or transfer events.[4]Syntactic Valency and Arguments
Ditransitive verbs exhibit a syntactic valency of three, requiring a subject and two complement arguments to form a complete clause, in contrast to intransitive verbs with valency one (subject only) and monotransitive verbs with valency two (subject and one object).[6] This valency reflects the verb's capacity to govern specific syntactic dependents, ensuring structural completeness.[7] The realization of these arguments involves the licensing of a direct object, typically denoting the theme or patient, and an indirect object, often associated with a recipient or beneficiary role. Ditransitive verbs specify this through subcategorization frames, such as V ___ NP NP for the double-object construction or V ___ NP PP for the prepositional variant, where the verb selects noun phrases or prepositional phrases as complements.[8] These frames dictate the syntactic positions and categories of the arguments, with the indirect object preceding the direct object in double-object structures to satisfy hierarchical ordering constraints.[9] A key alternation in ditransitive constructions is the dative alternation, permitting the same verb to appear in either a double-object frame (V NP NP) or a prepositional dative frame (V NP PP), without altering core semantic relations.[10] This phenomenon highlights the flexibility in argument realization while maintaining valency.[11] Formal representations of ditransitive structures often employ labeled bracketing or tree diagrams to illustrate argument positions. For the prepositional dative, a basic structure can be depicted as:[VP V [NP Theme] [PP to Recipient]]
[VP V [NP Theme] [PP to Recipient]]
[VP Recipient V' [V ] [VP Theme t_V ]]
[VP Recipient V' [V ] [VP Theme t_V ]]
English Usage
Active Voice Constructions
In English, ditransitive verbs in active voice primarily occur in two syntactic patterns: the double object construction and the prepositional dative construction. The double object construction involves the verb followed directly by the indirect object—typically encoding the recipient or beneficiary—and then the direct object, which represents the theme or transferred entity, resulting in a fixed word order of verb-indirect object-direct object. For example, in "She gave him the book," the indirect object "him" precedes the direct object "the book," highlighting the caused possession or transfer to the recipient.[12] This structure semantically enforces an interpretation of possession or benefit accruing to the indirect object.[12] By contrast, the prepositional dative construction positions the direct object immediately after the verb, followed by a prepositional phrase (usually with "to" for transfer verbs or "for" for benefactives) that specifies the recipient, as in "She gave the book to him." This variant introduces semantic flexibility, permitting non-animate or locative recipients (e.g., "She sent the letter to the office") and often implying directed motion toward the goal rather than strict possession.[12] The prepositional form thus accommodates a broader range of goal interpretations compared to the double object construction.[12] Common ditransitive verbs in English that alternate between these constructions include give, send, tell, and show, which belong to Levin's semantic class of transfer verbs and subcategorize for a theme and a goal argument, using "to" in the prepositional form.[13] The verb buy participates in a similar alternation but as a benefactive verb, using "for" (e.g., "She bought the book for him"). These verbs inherently involve conveyance of an entity to a recipient or beneficiary. Etymologically, give traces to Old English giefan ("to bestow or grant")[14]; send to Old English sendan ("to cause to go")[15]; tell to Old English tellan ("to count or recount")[16]; show to Old English sceawian ("to look at or exhibit")[17]; and buy to Old English bycgan ("to acquire by payment")[18]. Several constraints govern the use of these constructions. Animacy plays a key role, as the indirect object in the double object construction must typically be animate (e.g., a person or animal), rendering sentences like "*She gave the table the book" ungrammatical, whereas the prepositional dative tolerates inanimate goals (e.g., "She gave the book to the table").[19] Prosodic factors, including the phonological weight or complexity of the objects, further influence construction choice; heavier or longer direct objects often prompt the prepositional dative to optimize processing and avoid end-weight violations.[20]Passive Voice Constructions
In English, ditransitive verbs can undergo passivization in two primary ways, reflecting the dual objects in their active counterparts. The basic passive construction promotes the direct object (theme) to subject position, while the indirect object (recipient) is expressed as a prepositional phrase with "to" or "for," as in "The book was given to him by the teacher."[21] This form maintains the theme as the focused element and is available for all ditransitive verbs, aligning with the general passive rule that advances the patient or theme to subjecthood.[22] An alternative passive promotes the indirect object (recipient) to subject position, with the direct object following as the new object, as in "He was given the book by the teacher."[21] This recipient passive is restricted to strict ditransitive verbs like "give," "send," or "tell," where the indirect object denotes a beneficiary or recipient capable of caused possession.[23] Acceptability further depends on the animacy of the indirect object; it must typically be animate or human-like, as inanimate recipients (e.g., *"The table was given the book") are ungrammatical or highly infelicitous, reflecting a semantic constraint on the recipient role.[23] Verbs like "buy" or "build," which involve intended rather than actual transfer, often disallow this form, limiting them to the basic passive (e.g., "The gift was bought for her").[21] These passive constructions can introduce or resolve ambiguities related to agentivity and thematic roles. By demoting the agent to an optional "by"-phrase, passives shift focus from the doer to the affected entities, potentially clarifying thematic hierarchies in contexts where active voice might obscure whether the indirect object is a true recipient or beneficiary.[22] For instance, the choice between the two passives can disambiguate perspectival focus: the recipient passive emphasizes the beneficiary's experience (e.g., affectee role), while the theme passive highlights the transferred item, thus resolving potential vagueness in agent-driven transfer events.[22] However, ambiguities may arise if the verb allows both forms, as the passive can sometimes blur distinctions between theme and goal roles without contextual cues.[21] The evolution of these passives traces back to Middle English, where the recipient passive emerged around the 14th century, first attested in 1375, amid the loss of inflectional case endings and the establishment of rigid subject-verb-object word order.[23] This development was influenced by Anglo-Norman contact, with French-origin verbs (e.g., "pay," "promise") adopting the construction earlier than native Germanic ones (e.g., "give," "show"), leading to the animate recipient restriction that persists today but is absent in some other languages like German.[23] By Late Middle English, the "to"-dative alternant facilitated these passives, marking a shift from Old English's lack of such alternations.[23]Cross-Linguistic Variations
Morphosyntactic Alignment Patterns
Morphosyntactic alignment in ditransitive constructions refers to the ways in which the two object arguments—typically the recipient (R) and the theme (T)—are encoded relative to the patient (P) argument in monotransitive constructions, through mechanisms such as case marking, agreement, adpositions, and word order.[4] This alignment typology extends the basic patterns observed in monotransitive clauses (accusative, ergative, neutral) to three-argument verbs, revealing how languages group or distinguish R and T based on functional principles like economy of form and distinguishability of arguments. The three primary alignment patterns for ditransitives are indirective, secundative, and neutral, as established in typological surveys. In the indirective pattern, the theme aligns with the monotransitive patient (T = P), while the recipient is encoded differently, often with a dedicated dative or oblique marker; this is the most common pattern globally, occurring in 189 of 378 sampled languages, particularly in Eurasia.[4] For example, in German, the verb geben ('give') patterns indirectly: "Ich gebe dem Kind ein Buch" (I give.NOM the.DAT child a.ACC book), where T receives accusative case like P, but R takes dative. In contrast, the secundative pattern aligns the recipient with the patient (R = P), marking the theme differently, such as with an instrumental or locative; this is less frequent, documented in 65 languages, and prevalent in areas like the Americas and parts of Oceania.[4] An illustration comes from Chamorro: the recipient takes absolutive case like P, while the theme uses an oblique marker, as in "Ha na'i i patgon ni leche'" (he.ERG give ABS child OBL milk) 'He gave the milk to the child.'[4] The neutral (or double-object) pattern treats both R and T identically, aligning them with P without differential marking; it appears in 84 languages and is common in languages with flexible object encoding, such as many Niger-Congo and Austronesian tongues.[4] English exemplifies this in its double-object construction: "She gave him the book," where both objects follow the verb without prepositions, mirroring the direct object in transitives like "She saw him." Many languages exhibit mixed alignments, allowing multiple patterns depending on verb semantics, animacy, or discourse factors; for instance, English permits both indirective ("She gave the book to him") and neutral constructions for give.[4] Typological studies indicate that indirective alignment dominates due to the higher prominence of recipients in transfer events, influencing case hierarchies, though secundative patterns often emerge in languages with strong animacy effects or inverse marking systems.[24]| Alignment Type | Encoding Relation | Prevalence (WALS sample) | Example Language |
|---|---|---|---|
| Indirective | T = P ≠ R | 189 languages | German |
| Secundative | R = P ≠ T | 65 languages | Chamorro |
| Neutral | T = R = P | 84 languages | English |
| Mixed | Variable | 40 languages | English |
