Syntactic, Semantic and FSP aspects of ditransitive complementation: a study of give, lend, send, offer and show
Abstract
The lecture offers an analysis of five ditransitive verbs: give, lend, send, offer and show. It focuses on the position of the two objects and on the factors that have an impact on the object ordering.
An attempt is made to provide a systematic overview of the position of the two objects with respect to their realization (i.e. substantival or pronominal). The lecture aims at demonstrating whether the position of the two objects is in accordance with the principle of end-focus (i.e. the distribution of communicative dynamism) and the principle of end-weight and whether there are other potential factors that might play a role in the object ordering.
Next, attention is paid to the syntactic omissibility of an object of ditransitive verbs. It is demonstrated that a ditransitive construction semantically always includes three participants (a subject and two objects), although syntactically, the right-hand participants can be omitted.