A three-layer analysis of the English dative alternation

Executive summary: This talk was delivered at the 58th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea, 26 – 29 August 2025, Université Bordeaux Montaigne. We argued that the English dative alternation involves one construction with one meaning, but two allostructions with multiple senses.

Authors

Affiliations

Ludovic De Cuypere

Vrije Universiteit Brussel & Ghent University

Klaas Willems

Ghent University

Slides

Abstract

The relationship between pervasive variability and the structuralist “one-form-one-meaning” principle, a postulate endorsed across various theoretical frameworks, continues to spark debate. In an earlier chapter of this debate, Newmeyer (1983: 116) astutely observed that much of the debate hinges on how the notion of “meaning” is conceptualized (cf. Weber & Kopf 2023: 3). Newmeyer’s observation remains pertinent, and we accordingly aim to advance the discussion by offering a more theoretical contribution.

Specifically, we advocate for a “Three-Layer Approach” to meaning, a framework rooted in Coserian structural-functional linguistics and neo-Gricean pragmatics (Coseriu 1989, Levinson 2000, Belligh & Willems 2021). This approach differentiates between (i) encoded language-specific meanings, (ii) conventionalized senses, and (iii) specific readings in discourse. Furthermore, we draw on Coseriu’s (1989) distinction between polyvalence (a single expression with multiple senses) and polymorphy (“grammatical synonymy”, i.e. more than one expression for a single encoded meaning).

We elaborate on De Vaere’s (2023) analysis of the German dative alternation and explore its applicability to the English dative alternation. The German and English alternations are illustrated below:

1. 1. Er schickt seiner Mutter einen Brief. (IOC)
   2. Er schickt einen Brief an seine Mutter. (POC)
2. 1. He sends his mother a letter. (DOC)
   2. He sends a letter to his mother. (POC)

The German and English ditransitive alternation are similar. Both involve a RECIPIENT that can be expressed with or without a preposition. Corpus evidence further indicates that both alternations are also associated with similar motivating factors related to the THEME and RECIPIENT (pronominality, definiteness, length, etc.) (De Vaere 2023: 95). However, there is an important formal difference.

The German alternants are “indirective constructions” (Malchukov, Haspelmath, & Comrie 2010): the German non-prepositional alternant is not a Double Object Construction (DOC) but an Indirect Object Construction (IOC), sharing its alignment pattern with the Prepositional Object Construction (POC).

The three-layer analysis conceptualizes the German ditransitive construction as an overarching AGENT-THEME-GOAL (ATG) constructeme, with IOC and POC as two “allostructions”. A distributional analysis indicates that neither IOC nor POC are confined to a CAUSED POSSESSION and CAUSED MOTION meaning, respectively. The difference between IOC and POC involves polymorphy of the GOAL argument within the constructeme. A similar analysis applies to the English dative alternation, but in English the polymorphy of the GOAL argument coincides with two alternating word order patterns to a much larger extent than in a case language such as German.

References

Belligh, T., & Willems, K. (2021). What’s in a code? The code-inference distinction in Neo-Gricean Pragmatics, Relevance Theory, and Integral Linguistics. Language Sciences, 83, 101310. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2020.101310

Coseriu, E. (1989). Principes de syntaxe fonctionnelle. In G. Kleiber & G. Roques (Eds.), Travaux de linguistique et de philologie (Vol. XXVII, pp. 5–46). Klincksieck.

De Vaere, H. (2023). The ditransitive alternation in present-day German: A corpus-based analysis. John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/sigl.6

Levinson, S. C. (2000). Presumptive meanings: The theory of generalized conversational implicature. MIT Press.

Malchukov, A., Haspelmath, M., & Comrie, B. (2010). Ditransitive constructions: A typological overview. In A. Malchukov, M. Haspelmath, & B. Comrie (Eds.), Studies in ditransitive constructions: A comparative handbook (pp. 1–64). De Gruyter Mouton.

Newmeyer, F. J. (1983). Grammatical theory: Its limits and its possibilities. University of Chicago Press.

Weber, T., & Kopf, K. (2023). Chapter 1. Free variation, unexplained variation? In K. Kopf & T. Weber (Eds.), Free variation in grammar: Empirical and theoretical approaches (pp. 1–20). John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.234.01we