We examine Spanish dative alternations, and argue that although there are parallels to English, Harley’s (2003) analysis of English cannot be extended to Spanish, contra Bleam (2001). We propose an alternative based on the Morphosyntactic Alignment Principle of Beavers (2006), wherein the thematic role of the dative argument is a truth conditional strengthening of the thematic role of the corresponding oblique, which follows from the dative vs. oblique case alternation. We support this analysis by showing that it accounts for a range of less-oft discussed Spanish dative/oblique alternations. We then subsume Harley’s phrase structural analysis of English and our case-based analysis of Spanish under a more general notion of relative morphosyntactic prominence, predicting both the similarities and differences between the languages.
2022. Ditransitivity hierarchy, semantic compatibility and the realization of recipients in Korean dative constructions. Journal of Linguistics 58:1 ► pp. 37 ff.
2017. Acceptability of Dative Argument Structure in Spanish: Assessing Semantic and Usage‐Based Factors. Cognitive Science 41:8 ► pp. 2170 ff.
Mateu, Jaume
2012. Structure of the Verb Phrase. In The Handbook of Hispanic Linguistics, ► pp. 333 ff.
[no author supplied]
2020. Glossing conventions. In The Roots of Verbal Meaning, ► pp. xvii ff.
[no author supplied]
2020. Copyright Page. In The Roots of Verbal Meaning, ► pp. iv ff.
[no author supplied]
2020. List of abbreviations. In The Roots of Verbal Meaning, ► pp. xv ff.
[no author supplied]
2020. General preface. In The Roots of Verbal Meaning, ► pp. ix ff.
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