Séminaire de Recherche en Linguistique

In this talk, I describe double object constructions in Syrian Arabic and various case frame alternations that occur there. In this language, some ditransitive verbs select an English-like double accusative frame (along the lines of ‘give Mary the book’), while others select a Germanic/Slavic-like dative-accusative frame. I show that both frames alternate with a prepositional frame (along the lines of ‘give the book to Mary’), though this is not obvious at first, since the preposition involved is homophonous with the dative case marker. The picture that emerges is one in which dative case is both ‘lexical’ in that it is contingent on a selecting verb, and ‘structural’ in that it alternates with non-dative case in the prepositional alternant. I also show that a comparison of Syrian with the Maltese dialect points to a source of parametric variation in the availability of the double object frame having to do with the definiteness hierarchy. I argue that Maltese requires the indirect object to be pronominal in the double object frame, masking the existence of that frame. I suggest that this explanation extends to Romance and generally parametrically distinguishes languages that seem to only have a prepositional frame from those have a double object frame as well.