7 - Ditransitives
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 April 2023
Summary
Chapter 7 lays out new data from both Faroese and Icelandic regarding triadic verbs, in particular the passive of ‘give’ and other three-place predicates. The theoretical apparatus presented in Chapter 6 is brought to bear on ditransitives and shown to predict the correct case frames and word orders in Icelandic and Faroese. First, an outline is given of double-object verbs in Faroese, noting that the evidence in some of the preceding literature is equivocal as to the acceptability of passive with ‘give’ and other triadic verbs. Data from a Faroese survey are discussed, the result being that no sentence with passive of ‘give’ was broadly accepted. Faroese evidence is discussed regarding the position of the theme and goal arguments in the active. Further data on the ‘give’ passive in Icelandic are presented; consistently with previous work, these Icelandic speakers have the option of either Goal-V-Theme or Theme-V-Goal orders in the passive. A Faroese survey on passives of ditransitives other than ‘give’ shows that the lexical semantics of a given verb interact with word order, such that if passive is judged acceptable, its mean acceptability is higher for the Theme-V-Goal order than for Goal-V-Theme.
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- Optimal Linking GrammarA Theory of Morphosyntax, pp. 157 - 178Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023