engleski

Dative alternation in the English language

The main focus of this paper is to provide an overview of theories and analyses in connection with the phenomenon of dative alternation or dative shift, i.e. the alternation between the prepositional structure and the double object structure. This phenomenon is rather interesting owing to the fact that it cannot be found in all the languages and the characteristics which are linked to the appliance of this phenomenon are not yet fully explored. My aim was to provide information about the theories which focus on the realization of dative alternation and which investigate the constraints under which it can be realized in a sentence. The greatest difference when it comes to the analyses lies in the two approaches – the single meaning approach and the multiple meaning approach. The first approach analyses the dative alternation syntactically and lexically, while the second approach gives more importance to the meaning of the verbs which are used in the dative alternation phenomenon. I have tried to provide the brief historical analyses of the development of the theories in connection to the phenomenon. Moreover, my goal was to introduce the difference between the indirect and direct object and why it is important in the analysis of this phenomenon. I have also tried to explain grammatical relations which occur and the hypothesis that there are basic grammatical categories which are organized hierarchically. Furthermore, I provided a short overview of single meaning approach theories and constructional approach which is the part of the multiple meaning approaches, along with the verb sensitivity approach of Hovav and Levin. In the last section of this paper I mentioned some problems in connection with language acquisition and learnability of the dative alternation phenomenon.

dative alternation, double object construction, theory, hypothesis, single meaning approach, multiple meaning approach, language acquisition, meaning, direct object, indirect object

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