Investigation On Semantic Relationship Between Ditransitive Constructions

The 'ditransitive constructions' is one of the important syntactic forms in English. It is commonly accepted that the ditransitive constructions in English can be divided into two types: the Double Object Construction (DOC) and the Dative Construction (DC). This thesis is to investigate the semantic relationship between the DOC and the DC.Many scholars have expressed their different ideas toward this issue. General speaking, there are two contrast views. One is called the derivational approach; the other is called the non-derivational approach. The derivational approach claims that these two ditransitive constructions have the same meaning. The DOC and the DC all express the meaning of caused-possession. The non-derivational approach proposes that the two ditransitive constructions entail the different meanings. The DOC expresses the meaning of caused-possession while the DC expresses the meaning of caused-motion. However, both of the derivational and non-derivational approaches have shortcomings in their theories.Based on the meanings of the ditransitive verbs, this thesis proposes that the verbs meaning is the core element which determines the semantic relationship between the two ditransitive constructions. According to the meanings, the ditransitive verbs are divided into the caused-possession verbs and the caused-motion verbs. The thesis claims that when the verbs are the caused-possession verbs, the two ditransitive constructions have the same meaning; both of them entail the meaning of caused-possession. When the verbs are the caused-motion verbs, the two ditransitive constructions have the different meanings, the DOC expresses the meaning of caused-possession, and the DC expresses the meaning of caused-motion.The propositions of the thesis are testified by the British National Corpus, and the results of the research show that our propositions are valid.