extension type, some higher influence is often assumed. For this
reason, it can be used for addictions as well as religious behaviour.^44
In our table, case 1 stands for the‘giver-antecedent’and case 2 for
the‘thing-antecedent’. Semantically, it makes a considerable differ-
ence whether the reflexive form is built around the personal giver who
gives himself or the impersonal thing that presents itself. It is remark-
able that case 2, which means that a ditransitive construction can be
built without a personal giver, is very common in many languages.
Although the regular paradigm of giving assumes a personal giver, the
so-called presentative construction is an exception to this rule. If this
linguistic fact is ignored, thinkers may postulate personified givers in
an improper way. The phenomenology of‘givenness’, for instance,
needs to pay proper attention to the differences between 1 and 2.^45
A corollary of this insight concerns the reduced case 3. In some
languages, especially German, case 2 can become so reduced that
‘give’is only connected to an impersonal thing so that ditransitivity
disappears. Newman considers such forms to be a sub-species of
presentative construction. It is typical of these that no giver is
assumed and that the sentence denotes existence as such (e.g. the
German phrasees gibt einen Gott). The phrase can be characterized
‘as putting some entity on an imaginary stage’. Newman also
describes the difference between 2 and 3 as a difference between
presence and existence.^46
For the present study, cases 1–3 constitute a complementary back-
ground for cases 4–6 that come closer to the issues of recognition.
In these cases, reflexive ditransitive constructions establish an identi-
fication between two objects. The phrase‘he gives us to ourselves’is
an example this kind (case 4). Such constructions can be interpreted
in terms of complementarity between‘give’and‘receive’.If‘receive’is
a counterpart of‘give’, an identification between the thing-object and
the recipient-object of ‘giving’ corresponds to the identification
between the recipient-subject and the thing-object of‘receiving’.
While cases 4–6 instantiate a reflexivity between the two objects of
‘give’, they also instantiate reflexive‘receive’. This complementarity
(^44) Newman 1996, 158–60, 240–3.
(^45) This problem is particularly urgent in German. In Saarinen 2016, I discuss
various aspects of Table 4.1 in German.
(^46) Newman 1996, 162–3.
228 Recognition and Religion