Some argument-structure properties of ‘give’ in the languages of Europe and Northern and Central Asia

The alignment typology of ditransitive constructions with the verb ‘give’ in languages of Europe and Northern and Central Asia is overwhelmingly of the indirective type, although there are sporadic occurrences of double object and secundative alignment, usually as alternatives to indirective alignment. Even though under indirective alignment Recipients might be expected to be syntactically less accessible than Patients and Themes, languages of the area provide a fair number of instances of the syntactic primacy of Recipients over other objects.