The Rise of the <i>To</i>−Dative in Middle English

McFadden, Thomas

doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199250691.003.0006

Cited by 55 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…Allen, 1995: 410;Lass, 1992:108 -being replaced in many contexts by the todative; cf. McFadden, 2002). Where the indirect object was a to-dative, we thus also find ME instances of the order DO -V -to IO, such as the following:…”

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confidence: 63%

Changing EPP parameters in the history of English: accounting for variation and change

Biberauer

Roberts

2005

English Language and Linguistics

116

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This paper presents a novel "Kaynian" analysis of Old and Middle English (OE and ME) word-order patterns in terms of which the patterns attested at the various stages of OE and ME are analysed as the output of a single grammar which, however, permits restricted types of variation. We propose that the West Germanic-like OE word orders were derived via the application of two types of "large XP" movement -VP-raising to SpecvP and vP-raising to SpecTP -which are in fact pied-piping operations: in both cases, a DP contained within VP and vP -the object and the subject respectively -constitutes the actual Goal of movement, with the larger structure simply being pied-piped along. Non-West-Germanic orders in both OE and ME and synchronic variation more generally are shown to be derived from the sideby-side availability in the OE and ME grammar of pied-piping and "stranding", and the wordorder changes that occurred in ME are analysed as the consequence of a reanalysis of the ever more liberal "stranding"-permitting pied-piping grammar as one which specifically targets DPs. INTRODUCTIONIn this paper, we propose a new analysis of the word-order variation found in Old andMiddle English and also of the word-order changes that took place during the Middle English period. Although we follow a broadly "Kaynian" approach to the analysis of OV order in that we assume that such orders cannot be the direct result of First Merge of object and verb, our approach differs from other approaches in the literature (e.g. Roberts, 1997;van der Wurff, 1997avan der Wurff, , 1997bvan der Wurff, , 1999 in that we propose that the movements that derived the Old and Middle

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confidence: 63%

Changing EPP parameters in the history of English: accounting for variation and change

Biberauer

Roberts

2005

English Language and Linguistics

116

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“…McFadden (2002) and Polo (2002) present studies which together document the complex interplay of factors that led to the emergence of the dative alternation. Here we can only sketch salient details.…”

Section: W H Y D O E S E N G L I S H H a V E A D A T I V E A L T E R mentioning

confidence: 92%

“…Old English lacked the dative alternation and allowed the theme and recipient to appear in either order as full NPs, with the former marked for accusative case and the latter for dative case ; in fact, both orders are well-attested (Allen 1995: 48, McFadden 2002: 108, Polo 2002. With the erosion of the morphological case system for full NPs and the gradual introduction of the to variant, in which the theme precedes the recipient, McFadden (2002) shows that a preference developed for interpreting the first of two full postverbal NPs as a recipient and the second as a theme -that is, as in the double object construction. Polo (2002) further shows that theme-recipient order became exclusively expressed via the to variant once third person pronouns also lost the [18] A crosslinguistic survey by Haspelmath (2005) of the argument realization options of give shows that this verb manifests a dative alternation in at most 39 out of 378 languages surveyed.…”

Section: W H Y D O E S E N G L I S H H a V E A D A T I V E A L T E R mentioning

confidence: 99%

The English dative alternation: The case for verb sensitivity

2008

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We challenge the predominant view of the English dative alternation, which takes all alternating verbs to have two meanings : a caused possession meaning realized by the double object variant and a caused motion meaning realized by the to variant. Instead, we argue that verbs like give and sell only have a caused possession meaning, while verbs like throw and send have both caused motion and caused possession meanings. We show that the caused possession meaning may be realized by both variants. Concomitantly, we argue that verbs like give, even in the to variant, lack a conceptual path constituent, and instead have a caused possession meaning which can be understood as the bringing about of a ' have' relation. We reassess evidence for alternative approaches adduced from inference patterns and verb-argument combinations and demonstrate how our verb-sensitive analysis, when combined with an account of variant choice, provides a more insightful explanation of this data, while having wider coverage. Our investigation affirms proposals that a verb's own meaning plays a key role in determining its argument realization options. To conclude, we consider the crosslinguistic implications of our study, attempting to explain why so many languages lack a true dative alternation. A V E R B -S E N S I T I V E A P P R O A C H T O T H E D A T I V E A L T E R N A T I O NAny analysis of the English dative alternation must address the question of what gives rise to this alternation, particularly as it is not found in all languages. This alternation involves verbs that show two realizations of apparently the same arguments, as illustrated with give and throw in (1) and (2), respectively. We refer to these two argument realization patterns as [1] We have had many opportunities to present this material, and we are grateful to the audiences for their comments and questions. We thank all those who have discussed this paper with us or provided extensive comments on earlier versions, including

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“…Yet in comparison to the genitive alternation its history is less well documented. We know that for most of the Old English period, the prepositional dative construction was not widely available (Mitchell 1985, Traugott 1992, and word order, in what in Modern English we would call the 'ditransitive' construction, was variable (Kemenade 1987, Koopman 1990, McFadden 2002De Cuypere (2010) shows that this variability was subject to some of the same factors (animacy, pronominality and so on) that drive the dative alternation in Modern English. Late Old English texts see the emergencealbeit initially subject to lexical restrictions (Allen 2009) -of the prepositional dative construction (Fischer 1992, Fischer & van der Wurff 2006, which during the Middle English period developed into "a fully productive alternative" (Fischer & van der Wurff 2006: 166) to the ditransitive dative construction.…”

Section: A Very Short History Of Genitive and Dative Variation In Engmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Late Old English texts see the emergencealbeit initially subject to lexical restrictions (Allen 2009) -of the prepositional dative construction (Fischer 1992, Fischer & van der Wurff 2006, which during the Middle English period developed into "a fully productive alternative" (Fischer & van der Wurff 2006: 166) to the ditransitive dative construction. Conventional wisdom (e.g., McFadden 2002, Fischer & van der Wurff 2006 holds that the loss of case distinctions during the Middle English period triggered the emergence of the prepositional dative construction as a means to avoid ambiguity, although there are alternative explanations, such as language contact with French (see Visser 1963). In any event, word order of nominal (but not pronominal) objects in the ditransitive dative construction was fixed along the lines of the Modern English pattern by the late fourteenth century (Allen 2009).…”

Section: A Very Short History Of Genitive and Dative Variation In Engmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dative and genitive variability in Late Modern English

Wolk

Bresnan

Rosenbach³

et al. 2013

DIA

174

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We present a cross-constructional approach to the history of the genitive alternation and the dative alternation in Late Modern English (AD 1650 to AD 1999), drawing on richly annotated datasets and modern statistical modeling techniques. We identify cross-constructional similarities in the development of the genitive and the dative alternation over time (mainly with regard to the loosening of the animacy constraint), a development which parallels distributional changes in animacy categories in the corpus material. Theoretically, we transfer the notion of 'probabilistic grammar' to historical data and claim that the corpus models presented reflect past speakers' knowledge about the distribution of genitive and dative variants. The historical data also helps to determine what is constant (and timeless) in the effect of selected factors such as animacy or length, and what is variant.* We express our thanks to the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS) for funding the project "Predicting syntax in space and time". We are also grateful to the audiences of the March 2010 workshop on "Probabilistic syntax: Phonetics, diachrony and synchrony" (hosted by the FRIAS) and the November 2010 workshop on "The development of syntactic alternations" (Stanford University) for constructive feedback. We acknowledge helpful comments and suggestions by Ludovic De Cuypere, Beth Levin and Joanna Nykiel, and owe gratitude to Stephanie Shih for advice on coding final sibilancy, and to Katharina Ehret, whose assistance has contributed significantly to the development of our research. Lastly, three anonymous referees provided us with extremely helpful and constructive comments and suggestions. The usual disclaimers apply. The third author is grateful to the University of Paderborn for providing her access to their on-line library resources while working on this article.

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The Rise of the To−Dative in Middle English

Cited by 55 publications

References 28 publications

Changing EPP parameters in the history of English: accounting for variation and change

Changing EPP parameters in the history of English: accounting for variation and change

The English dative alternation: The case for verb sensitivity

Dative and genitive variability in Late Modern English

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