Giving trees to ditransitivesThanks goes to Dr. P. Hagstrom

You may recall our discussion of q-theory, where we happily classified verbs into three types:

Intransitive (1 q-role)

Transitive (2 q-roles)

Ditransitive (3 q-roles)

Theta roles go to obligatory arguments, not to adjuncts.

Giving trees to ditransitives If you also recall that we

believed that trees are binary

branching, where:

Syntactic relations are formed

by ‘merge’.

And for anything to merge in

the tree, we need a maximal

projection, an intermediate

level and a head.

So, there is just one

complement and one

specifier.

And our discovery that subjects

should start out within the

projection of their predicate, so

that q-role assignment is strictly

local (assigned to either a

complement or a specifier).

Problems continue… I showed Mary to herself.

*I showed herself to Mary.

I introduced nobody to anybody.

*I introduced anybody to nobody.

Despite the fact that even amongst the grammatical

ones, some sentences sound bad, we have

something to cherish!

This tells us something about the relationship

between the direct and indirect object in the

structure.

What is that relationship?

Some clues from idioms It has been noticed that the idiomatic meanings are

associated with the verb+object complex,

In other words, the meaning is derived both from the verb and the object together.

Something like [pay attention], where we can say that in this expression you don’t pay anything, but you attend.

Still, the verbal expression has a verb and its object and both seem to give the meaning.

We talk about this due to the fact that the verb and object can be sisters at DS. Bill threw a baseball.

Bill threw his support behind the candidate.

Bill threw the boxing match.

Idioms in ditransitives

With many ditransitive verbs, it seems that

this happens with the PP.

Beethoven gave the Fifth Symphony to the world.

Beethoven gave the Fifth Symphony to his patron.

Larson sent his first painting to the show-makers.

Larson sent his first painting to Amsterdam.

Mary took Felix to task.

Mary took Felix to the cleaners.

Mary took Felix to his doctor’s appointment.

So V and PP are sisters…

Larson (1988) took this as evidence that the V is a sister to the PP at DS.

Larson, Richard K. 1988. “On the double object construction.” Linguistic Inquiry 19(3): 335-391.

Yet, we see that on the surface the OBJ comes between the verb and the PP.

Mary sent a letter to Bill.

Where is the OBJ?

It must c-command the PP, remember.

Why is the V to the left of the OBJ at SS?

PP

V

V

Where’s the V? Where’s the OBJ? We already know how to deal with this kind of

question

If there is a verb that comes before the subject in some language VSO (i.e. in Irish) OR

The verb coming before adverbs in French, such as [S V Adv O] and *[S Adv V O],

We know how to deal with these situations.

Some instance of ‘transformation/movement’ will bring the answer:

The verb moves over the OBJ.

But to which place ‘where’?

PP

V

V

Where’s the V? Where’s the OBJ? Larson’s answer to this is obvious;

If we are going to have binary branching and there are three positions for argument-XPs i.e. (SUB, OBJ(DO), PP(IO),

We need to have another XP above the VP.

Since the subject is in the specifier of the higher XP, this new XP must be a VP too.

But the presentation of this VP should look different from other VP<the actual VP>

Ditransitive verbs really come in two parts.

They are in a “VP shell” structure.

Where’s the V? Where’s the OBJ? The higher verb is a “light verb”

and we’ll write it as vP to signify the difference,

and it will have its contribution by assigning the q-role to the subject.

The lower verb assigns the q-roles to the OBJ and the PP.

This helps to solve the attachment of two OBJs.

Bill gave a book to Mary and a record to Sue.

Bill gavei [VP a book ti to Mary]and [VP a record ti to Sue].

Sending a letter to Bill This also helps us to explain Mary sent a letter to

Bill, by saying there are two VPs,

send head-moves from the lower one to the upper one, over the OBJ:

Mary senti a letter ti to Bill.

OR, Mary senti Bill ti a letter.

Note: You can also say Mary sent Bill a letter,which is one of the major things Larson wasconcerned about.

Radford provides an analysis of this in thebook and you can read his argument on yourown to learn more about it.

little v… So, this is the structure that we

came up with to get the wordorder right in a binary-branchingtree.

John gave a book to Mary.

We accept that there must be a“little v”, a light verb, to which theV moves. This little v assigns theAgent q-role.

So English has a v in its lexiconthat assigns the Agent q-role.

Giving Mary a book

In this connection, we might now be able to understand a little bit about Bill gave Mary a book.

Notice that here, there is no PP, and the order of the arguments appears to be reversed.

But maybe it still satisfies the UTAH with respect to the Theme q-role, since the Theme is still the first DP Merged with V.

OBJ

V

V

VP

IO

v

v

vP

SUB