Modern Greek Ditransitives in LMT

This paper deals with Modern Greek ditransitives constructions of the following form:

I argue for an account which shares with the ``dative shift'' approaches the idea that there is a single verb meaning involved, and with the ``dative alternation'' approaches the idea that variants are nonderivationally related (see Butt, Darlymple and Frank 1997, Wechsler 1995, among others, for similar approaches in LFG and HPSG, respectively, to English ditransitives). The starting point of the analysis for predicates heading Modern Greek genitive ditransitive constructions is that they are not polysemous and, more generally, the genitive ditransitive alternation does not involve two distinct meanings for each individual ditransitive predicate. In the spirit of Levin and Rappaport Hovan 2002, I propose that the key idea is that the genitive ditransitive alternation in Modern Greek is not about alternate objects, like for instance, the locative alternation in Modern Greek, but about alternate expressions of recipients (i.e., animate goals). That is, recipients in Modern Greek genitive ditransitive constructions may be realized in two ways as they are open to two semantic characterizations (see also Goldsmith 1980 for English): (i) a type of possessor, (ii) a type of goal, as the Localist Hypothesis predicts (cf., also Gruber 1965, Jackendoff 1972). The consequence of the availability of two semantic characterizations for recipients in the case of Modern Greek genitive ditransitive constructions (i.e., possessors and goals) is that recipients have also two potential modes of syntactic instantiation: (i) a genitive case-marked NP (see example (2)), (ii) a PP ("s-tin" (to)-phrase in example (1)). For Modern Greek double accusative ditransitive constructions I propose an analysis which shares with the ``dative alternation'' approaches the idea that variants are nonderivationally related. I also propose, though, that unlike the genitive ditransitive constructions in Modern Greek the double accusative ditransitive construction is about alternate objects, like for instance, the locative alternation in Modern Greek. This proposal is strongly supported by the evidence from adjectival passives and nominalizations in relation to Modern Greek double accusative ditransitive constructions, which shows that with predicates heading double accusative ditransitives either the "theme" or the "recipient" argument exhibits ``object'' properties, depending on which is (the primary) object. Such an analysis also tends to be accompanied by different lexical semantic entailments in relation to the two variants.