From language-specific constraints to implicational universals: a cognitive-typological view of the dative alternation.

Hollmann, Willem B. (2007) From language-specific constraints to implicational universals: a cognitive-typological view of the dative alternation. Functions of Language, 14 (1). pp. 57-78. ISSN 1569-9765

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Abstract

This article seeks to shed more light on the well-studied, yet still challenging, dative alternation. It starts from the cognitive-typological suggestion of Croft (2001, 2003) that language-internal variation is subject to the same constraints as cross-linguistic variation (the semantic map model), and that careful language-specific research may therefore reveal facts about language in general. I argue that there is a parallel between dativisability and passivisability. Then, using a sample of active tokens from the British National Corpus of ditransitive give in both the indirect-object and double-object constructions and comparing these to a matched sample of passive examples, I evaluate the effect on passivisability — and hence dativisability — of the semantic parameters proposed in previous scholarship. The results are stated as a set of implicational universals. They should hold for all languages that feature the alternation, and make diachronic predictions as well. In addition to the semantics — which has been discussed in many previous studies — I argue that token frequency also plays a role in promoting dativisability — which has never been suggested before. The conclusion identifies some general implications for theoretical linguistics and for the practice of research on language structure and meaning.

Item Type:
Journal Article
Journal or Publication Title:
Functions of Language
Uncontrolled Keywords:
/dk/atira/pure/researchoutput/libraryofcongress/p1
Subjects:
?? LINGUISTICS AND LANGUAGELANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICSP PHILOLOGY. LINGUISTICS ??
ID Code:
1854
Deposited By:
Deposited On:
25 Feb 2008 17:44
Refereed?:
Yes
Published?:
Published
Last Modified:
19 Sep 2023 23:54