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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
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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

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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.

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