180 L. MICHELLE CUTRER
is the highest ranking potential undergoer argument. The crucial observa
tion is that the highest ranking potential undergoer argument serves as con
troller, irrespective of its specific thematic status.
The situation becomes slightly more complex in constructions which
include three core arguments in the matrix core.
(30) a. John gave the book to Mary to read.
b. John gave Mary the book to read.
The merchant provides the team with uniforms to wear.These verbs encode a "transfer of possession" of an object, from one per
son or groups of persons to another person or group. The post-verbal gap is
always controlled by the item transferred, which is the rightmost argument
on the cline in (28). The matrix core encodes the transfer of the item, from
effector to recipient, the linked core encodes what is to be done to the item
after the transfer.
Note that in the RRG analysis "dative shift" may make the recipient a
marked undergoer choice, changing its syntactic status. In (30b), the reci
pient/locative Mary is the undergoer; this is a case of marked undergoer
choice. However, there is no change in the semantics of the verb; the same
event is encoded. As the semantics of the situation does not change, there
is no change in thematic roles or position of these roles in terms of their
position on the hierarchy; hence, we do not expect the control facts to
change, and they do not. There is still an entity transferred, and that entity
is the controller.
In RRG terms this may be formulated as follows: the highest ranking
potential undergoer argument, the theme, is controller of the obligatory
gap. In cases such as "dative shift", as in (30b), where there is a marked
choice for undergoer, the highest ranking potential undergoer is not the
undergoer. (see FVV (1984), "Synopsis", section 4.5 for a discussion of this
issue.) In (30b), the theme book remains controller of the object gap
because it is still the highest ranking argument with respect to the under
goer end of the hierarchy in (28). In sentence (30c), the theme uniforms is
the highest ranking potential undergoer and is controller even though it is
an oblique core argument and not the undergoer.
Thus, it is not necessarily the direct object or even the undergoer
which is the controller of the post-verbal gap, but the highest ranking
potential undergoer argument. This indicates that there is some indepen
dence between the semantic level of thematic relations and the syntactic