Hostname: page-component-76d6cb85b7-f97m6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-07-17T09:47:47.075Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

So-Called ‘Double Objects’ and Grammatical Relations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 March 2026

Richard Hudson
Richard Hudson*
Affiliation:
University College London
*
Department of Linguistics and Phonetics, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, United Kingdom
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In a ‘double-object’ construction, which of the NPs after the verb is the real object? Contrary to standard assumptions, I shall show that it is the second NP, so the first is the (traditional) ‘indirect object’. This finding is important because it challenges the hypothesis that grammatical relations can be shown configurationally and supports the competing claim that grammatical relations are basic. The paper also suggests why judgments on some constructions are so divided; the reason is that three different grammars are all compatible with the same basic data, and differ only on the relatively rare patterns where the variation appears.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 68 , Issue 2 , June 1992 , pp. 251 - 276
Copyright
© 1992 Linguistic Society of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

*

This is a radically revised version of a paper on which I had helpful comments from various people, notably a reader for Language and And Rosta. I presented part of the material at a meeting of the Linguistics Association of Great Britain in April 1991.

References

Akmajian, Adrian, and Heny, Frank. 1975. An introduction to the principles of transformational syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Anderson, Stephen. 1988. Objects (direct and not-so-direct) in English and elsewhere. On Language, ed. by Duncan-Rose, C. and Vennemann, Theo, 287–314. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Arbib, Michael, and Hill, Jane. 1988. Language acquisition: Schemas replace Universal Grammar. Explaining language universals, ed. by Hawkins, John, 56–72. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Bach, Emmon. 1982. Purpose clauses and control. The nature of syntactic representation, ed. by Jacobson, Pauline and Pullum, Geoffrey, 35–57. Dordrecht: Reidel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baker, Mark. 1988. Incorporation: A theory of grammatical function changing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Barss, Andrew, and Lasnik, Howard. 1986. A note on anaphora and double objects. Linguistic Inquiry 17. 347–54.Google Scholar
Blake, Barry. 1990. Relational Grammar. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bresnan, Joan. 1982. Control and complementation. The mental representation of grammatical relations, ed. by Bresnan, Joan, 282–390. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Bresnan, Joan, and Kanerva, Jonni. 1989. Locative inversion in Chichewa: A case study of factorization in grammar. Linguistic Inquiry 20. 1–50.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1965. Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1981. Lectures on government and binding. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1986. Barriers. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Dik, Simon. 1989. The theory of Functional Grammar 1: The structure of the clause. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Dowty, David. 1982. Grammatical relations and Montague Grammar. The nature of syntactic representation, ed. by Jacobson, Pauline and Pullum, Geoffrey, 79–130. Dordrecht: Reidel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dowty, David. 1991. Thematic proto-roles and argument selection. Lg. 67. 547–619.Google Scholar
Dryer, Matthew. 1986. Primary objects, secondary objects, and antidative. Lg. 62. 808–45.Google Scholar
Emonds, Joseph. 1972. Evidence that Indirect Object Movement is a structure-preserving rule. Foundations of Language 8. 546–61.Google Scholar
Emonds, Joseph. 1976. A transformational approach to English syntax. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Faltz, Leonard M. 1978. On indirect objects in universal syntax. Chicago Linguistic Society 14. 76–87.Google Scholar
Fillmore, Charles. 1965. Indirect object constructions in English and the ordering of transformations. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Fodor, Janet Dean. 1978. Parsing strategies and constraints on transformations. Linguistic Inquiry 9. 427–73.Google Scholar
Fraser, Norman M., and Hudson, Richard A. 1992. Inheritance in Word Grammar. Computational Linguistics, to appear.Google Scholar
Gazdar, Gerald, Klein, Ewan, Pullum, Geoffrey K.; and Sag, Ivan. 1985. Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Gropen, Jess, Pinker, Steven, Hollander, Michelle, Goldberg, Richard; and Wilson, Ronald. 1989. The learnability and acquisition of the dative alternation in English. Lg. 65. 203–57.Google Scholar
Huddleston, Rodney. 1984. An introduction to the grammar of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hudson, Richard. 1984. Word Grammar. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Hudson, Richard. 1990. English Word Grammar. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Jackendoff, Ray. 1990a. On Larson's treatment of the double-object construction. Linguistic Inquiry 21. 427–56.Google Scholar
Jackendoff, Ray. 1990b. Semantic structures. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Jacobson, Pauline. 1987. Phrase structure, grammatical relations and discontinuous constituents. Syntax and semantics 20: Discontinuous constituency, ed. by Huck, Geoffrey J. and Ojeda, Almerindo E., 27–69. New York: Academic Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jaeggli, Osvaldo. 1986. Passive. Linguistic Inquiry 17. 587–622.Google Scholar
Jespersen, Otto. 1927. The philosophy of grammar. London: Allen and Unwin.Google Scholar
Kayne, Richard. 1983. Connectedness and binary branching. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Keenan, Edward. 1976. Towards a universal definition of ‘subject’. Subject and Topic, ed. by Li, Charles, 303–33. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Larson, Richard. 1988. On the double object construction. Linguistic Inquiry 19. 335–91.Google Scholar
Larson, Richard. 1990. Double objects revisited: Reply to Jackendoff. Linguistic Inquiry 21. 589–632.Google Scholar
Marantz, Alec. 1984. On the nature of grammatical relations. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Matthews, Peter. 1981. Syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Nesfield, J. C. 1916. Manual of English grammar and composition. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Pollard, Carl, and Sag, Ivan. 1987. Information-based syntax and semantics 1: Fundamentals. Stanford, CA: Center for the Study of Language and Information.Google Scholar
Quirk, Randolph, Greenbaum, Sidney, Leech, Geoffrey; and Svartvik, Jan. 1985. A comprehensive grammar of the English language. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Rothstein, Susan. 1983. The syntactic forms of predication. Cambridge, MA: MIT dissertation.Google Scholar
Siewierska, Anna. 1991. Functional Grammar. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Tomlin, Russell. 1986. Basic word order: Functional principles. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Upton, Clive, Sanderson, Stewart; and Widdowson, John. 1987. Word maps. A dialect atlas of England. London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Whitney, R. 1983. The syntactic unity of Wh-movement and Complex NP shift. Linguistic Analysis 10. 299–319.Google Scholar
Ziv, Yael, and Sheintuch, Gloria. 1979. Indirect objects reconsidered. Chicago Linguistic Society 15. 390–403.Google Scholar