Bernard De Clerck

‘Caused motion’? The semantics of the English to-dative and the Dutch aan-dative

Abstract Both English and Dutch feature a variety of verbs of possessional transfer which display the phenomenon of dative alternation. They can either be used in a double object construction with unmarked NP theme and recipient objects or in a so-called “prepositional dative” construction in which only the theme is encoded as a bare NP object and the recipient is marked by a preposition. Within this context of dative alternation, this study zooms in on the English prepositional dative construction with to and the Dutch prepositional dative construction with aan (cognate with English on, German an). Existing analyses of these constructions hold widely different views on the semantic import of the prepositions used: some authors take the preposition to bring an element of ‘caused motion’ to the semantics of the construction, while others treat it as a grammaticalized marker of recipient function. We shall argue for an intermediate position: while the constructions with to and aan are not limited to events which involve an actual spatial transfer but cover a wide variety of ‘caused possession’ events, they are nevertheless subject to a number of constraints which can be traced back to the spatial semantics of English to and Dutch aan. These semantic constraints will be illustrated by means of corpus-based observations on the behaviour of a number of English and Dutch verbs in the respective dative alternations.

Semantic and pragmatic motivations for constructional preferences: a corpus-based study of provide, supply, and present

A select group of transfer verbs can enter into four different constructions: the ditransitive construction (He provided John the money), the prepositional-dative construction (He provided the money to John), a construction with a prepositional theme (He provided John with the money), and a construction with a recipient realized by a for-phrase (He provided the money for John). In this article, the authors take a close look at three such verbs: provide, supply, and present. Corpus analysis shows that these three verbs display different structural preferences with respect to the for-, to-, and with-patterns. To explain these preferences, the study investigates pragmatic principles (following Mukherjee on provide) and the role played by semantic factors. An examination of the semantics of the verbs and the lexically motivated constructional semantics of the to, for, and with-patterns shows (a) that the three constructions are not interchangeable and (b) that the preferential differences among the three verbs find an explanation in the compatibility between lexical and constructional semantics. The description is mainly based on data from the British National Corpus.

On the pragmatic functions of let’s utterances

This paper presents the results of research into the pragmatic functions of let’s utterances in the spoken component of the ICE-GB. The first part of the paper gives an overview of the grammatical features and the pragmatic uses of let’s utterances as described in the literature. The second part presents a detailed analysis of the attested let’s utterances in the corpus. Apart from testing the force and accuracy of the existing descriptions, the paper also examines the frequencies of occurrence of these functions and possible relationships with the different text categories they occur in. The goal is to provide an answer to such questions as who uses let’s utterances where, why, and how.

Introduction: a multifaceted approach to verb classes

Bernard De Clerck: Department of Translation, Interpreting and Communication, University of Ghent, Groot-Brittanniëlaan 45, B-9000 Ghent, Belgium. E-mail: Bernard.DeClerck@ugent.be Timothy Colleman: Department of Linguistics, University of Ghent, Blandijnberg 2, B-9000 Ghent, Belgium. E-mail: Timothy.Colleman@ugent.be Dominique Willems: Department of Linguistics, University of Ghent, Blandijnberg 2, B-9000 Ghent, Belgium. E-mail: Dominique.Willems@ugent.be