Delahunty and Garvey
c. Finkle made a successful legislator. (Pattern 3)
d. We made Portnoy our representative. (Pattern 4)
Second, many verbs not on the list can be understood as having a Benefi-
ciary, especially if they refer to some type of production:
(117) Wanda baked Phyllis a birthday cake.Third, the action denoted by the verb may involve something that is not
literally “transferred” to a recipient, nor is it always “beneficial”:
(118) Roscoe gave Morgentherp a sound thrashing.Since the meaning of verbs is so flexible, it is more illuminating to con-
sider the semantic roles assigned to the noun phrases in this pattern. The
subject is likely to be a causer such as an Agent or Stimulus:
(119)a. Anderson bought us souvenirs. (Agent)
b. The accident taught us a bitter lesson. (Stimulus)
Indirect objects tend to be Recipients or Benefactives; direct objects tend
to be Themes. But this is just a tendency, not an absolute restriction. In
(120), for example, the subject is an Agent, the direct object a Factitive, and
the indirect object is a Source.
(120) They asked me an unanswerable question.There is a relatively reliable test for distinguishing pattern 4 from pattern
5 constructions. We will call this the Dative Test. (Dative is the Latinate
term for the case of indirect objects.) Pattern 5 clauses can generally (though
not always) be paraphrased by a clause pattern in which the order of the two
object NPs is reversed, and a preposition is inserted before the second (cor-
responding to the IO). To usually indicates Recipient; for usually indicates
Beneficiary. The sentences in (121) paraphrase a selection of those above:
(121)a. Willard gave roses to Susie.
b. The eighteenth century brought great prosperity to England.
c. She paid a part of her debt to her creditors.
d. Warthog built some kitchen shelves for his aunt.
e. Wanda baked a birthday cake for Phyllis.