Re: Ditransitivity (again!)

Andrew Patterson wrote:

> Ditransitive verbs - Verbs that can take two objects
>
> Boil -  Boil me an egg.
>  Boil an egg for me.
>
> Burn  = record onto a writable CD or DVD.
>  Can you burn me a CD?
>  Can you burn a CD for me?
>
> Bung [Infl] = throw
>  Bung me the ball.
>
Most of the above, and most of the others below, are only optionally
di-transitive, some are merely showing a "dative of interest" or a
benefactive, e.g. "cook me an egg". And at least one, "consider" would be a
"double accusative" since the two objects refer to the same entity ("I
consider him a fool" comparable to "we elected him president").

IMO the true ditransitives _must_ have an indirect object (only deletable in
context, e.g. "I gave five dollars" in answer to "how much did you give to
the Red Cross?" perhaps.).  And they _must_ have a direct object, again
deletable in context-- but if you delete the DO, you also delete the IO in
most cases (esp. names and pronouns).
Compare "I gave $5 to charity" and in context "I gave $5 ~I gave to
charity", and even "I gave." versus "I gave John/him a book" but ?*"I gave a
book" except in context, and never *"I gave John/him".

True and optional di-transitives as well as double-accusatives gave me a lot
of grief in Kash, not all of it yet resolved :-((( The problem seemed to be
whether its Dative case could also be used for Benefactives, and the answer
seemed to be "sometimes yes, sometimes no". Hmph.

> The other verbs are:
> Buy, Call, Cook (and all kinds of cooking), Consider, Cry, Fetch, Find,
> Fry, Give, Hand, Hold, Leave, Lend, Lob, Offer, Pass, Post, Provide, Read,
> Send, Scribble, Serve, Show, Suggest, Teach, Tell, Think, Throw, Write.
Out of your list, IMO only Give and Hand (maybe Lend) are true di-trans.
since all the others can occur (albeit with different connotation--maybe
there should be a category "preferably di-trans."?) without an Indirect
Object. You could add "Sell" and "Introduce" (also optionals).
>
> I haven't quite gone into this deeply enough, but it seems that a word
that
> is nearly synonyms to a verb that is ditransitive is also ditransitive.
>
Probably true; consider "give"and "hand".  Glimmer of an idea:  perhaps
di-trans. always (??) involves a transfer of possession, literally or
figuratively.  NB this is still an on-going problem for me and Kash.