Chapter 5 - Verb Phrases(115) a Gary gave a present to Petunia
b Sonia sent the letter to Larry
c Knut knitted a sweater for Susan
d Barry baked a cake for Karen
Again, the arguments are similar, involving an agent, a theme and a PP complement
expressing the goal or beneficiary and so we can expect the structure to be similar.
This structure is sometimes called the dative construction. The interesting thing about
these verbs is that they can often enter into another construction which means virtually
the same thing as the dative, only involving two DP complements:
(116) a Gary gave Petunia a present
b Sonia sent Larry the letter
c Knut knitted Susan a sweater
d Barry baked Karen a cake
This is known as the double object construction as the verb has two objects,
traditionally referred to as the indirect and the direct objects respectively.
But the analysis of this construction is problematic:
(117) vP
DPagent v'
v VP
DPgoal V'
V DPtheme
In this structure the theme is sitting in the complement position of the thematic verb,
not the specifier, and the goal is in the specifier. The indirect object is obviously
interpreted in the same way as the PP is in the dative construction and so we should
expect it to appear in the complement position if the UTAH holds. We might try to
account for the properties of the double object construction via a movement analysis,
using the dative construction as the underlying arrangement as this seems relatively
unproblematic. The question is, what moves and where does it move to? A minimal
assumption is that besides the verb moving to the light verb position, one of the
arguments moves to change their order. Thus, either the theme moves backwards or
the goal moves forwards. If the theme moves backwards, it isn’t clear what position it
would move to and moreover it isn’t clear why it would move, given that the position
it occupies seems to be a Case position in virtually all other cases we have looked at.
The goal argument is slightly different however. In the dative construction there is a
preposition and this we might assume is what is responsible for providing the
argument with its Case. In the double object construction, however, this preposition is
not present and hence the argument cannot be assigned Case in the same way. This
would then provide the motivation for the argument to move to a position in which it
could get case. Considering the problem more closely the goal must move to a phrasal
position between the specifier of the VP, occupied by the theme, and the light verb to