Zero Morphemes And The Ditransitive Construction In English

The study of the ditransitive construction, which is composed of the double object construction(DOC) and the double complement construction(DCC), has been one of the most heated topics in linguistic research. In this thesis, we discuss the relationship between the double object construction and the double complement construction and we take zero morphemes to reanalyze the derivation of the two constructions mainly under the framework of the GB theory.The relations between the double object construction and the double complement construction have always been controversial. We assume that the double object construction and the double complement construction are independent constructions and there exist no transformational relations between them. So we analyze the derivation of the double object construction and the double complement construction respectively.The double object construction can be interpreted as "SUBJ CAUSE the IO to HAVE the DO", that is, there is a possessive relation between the two objects. Based on the zero morpheme G put forward by Pesetsky, we propose that there exists zeroin morpheme P_HAVE in the double object construction. In the double object construction, the verb decomposes into three heads: V_CAUSE, V_ROOT and P_HAVE .In our analysis, the deep structure of the double object construction is analyzed as (i):(i) [_VPAgent[v' V_CAUSE[v' V_ROOT[pp Goal,[_p'P_HAVE[NP Theme]]]]]]In the derivation of the double object construction, the zero morpheme P_HAVE incorporates into V_ROOT, and then P_HAVE+ V_ROOT incorporate into V_CAUSE , thus forming the final verb.And the double complement construction can be interpreted as "SUBJ CAUSE the DO GO to the IO" or "SUBJ CAUSE the DO LOCATED at the IO", that is, there is a locative meaning in the double complement construction. And supported by Larson's theory of "idioms-as-constituents", we assume that there also exists a zero morpheme in the double complement construction, that is, P_LOC, In the double complement construction , the verb decomposes into three heads: V_CAUSE V_ROOT and P_LOC. And the deep structure of the double complement construction is (ii):(ii) [_VPAgent[v'V_CAUSE[v' V_ROOT[ppTheme[p; P_LOC[pp[p'to[_NPGoal]]]]]]]In the derivation of the double complement construction, the zero morpheme P_LOC doesn't incorporate into V_ROOT but the preposition to, it forms a constituent with pp. P_LOC + to assign Case to the goal, V_ROOT moves and incorporates into V_CAUSE, thus forming the final verb gave. The agent is licensed by V_CAUSE, the theme is licensed by V_ROOT, and the goal, byP_LOC + to.With our analysis on the ditransitive construction, we can come to a conclusion that the semantic interpretation can be clearly embodied in the syntactic structure.