Re: THEORY: more questions

Doug Dee wrote:
>
> One might argue that English has Primary vs. Secondary objects, and that the
> DO/IO way of looking at objects is just a Latin-derived tradition upheld by
> English teachers.
>
> Consider:
>
> 1. They gave me a book.
> 2. I was given a book.
> 3. ?A book was given me.
>
> When you make a ditranstive Engish sentience into a passive, it's perfectly
> natural for the "Indirect object" to become the subject [as in 2] (just as the
> single object of a monotransitive sentence becomes the subject) but distinctly
> odd (at least in my dialect) for the "direct object" to become the subject
> [as in 3].
>
> I seem to recall reading somewhere that the general rule cross-linguistically
> is that if there's a distinct dative case for recipients etc. (as in e.g.
> Latin), then the DO of the ditransitive is generally treated like the object of a
> monotransitive, but if there is no such case (as in English), then it's the
> recipient ("indirect object") that is generally treated like the object of a
> montransitive.
But what about
4. A book was given (to me)
(Recipient dropped or expressed with a prep. phrase)?

Does English have two different types of passive?

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