The distribution of verbs and verb classes in the English for-dative  alternation: A lexico-paradigmatic approach

Pilar Guerrero Medina

Authors

Pilar Guerrero Medina Universidad de Córdoba

Abstract

Este artículo explora el papel de los verbos y clases verbales en la alternancia de dativo con for en el contexto del antiguo debate entre enfoques proyeccionistas y construccionistas (o de base sintagmática). Mi principal objetivo ha sido mostrar que un enfoque basado en la alternancia (y más orientado hacia el verbo), donde las «generalizaciones paradigmáticas preceden lógicamente a la interpretación estructural» (Davidse, 1998: 294) y el que también intervienen factores de la estructura de la información, puede ser útil para determinar la distribución de los verbos en la denominada alternancia de Beneficiario, p.ej. Mary carved a toy for the baby/Mary carved the baby a toy (Levin, 1993: 49).

La variante de doble objeto puede considerarse una construcción de estructura argumental en sí misma (véanse Goldberg, 1995; Rappaport Hovav y Levin, 1998), si asumimos que la compatibilidad de un determinado verbo con la construcción benefactiva está también determinada por semántica de la clase léxica verbal, como sostiene Croft (2003: 49).

Author Biography

Pilar Guerrero Medina, Universidad de Córdoba

Pilar Guerrero is senior lecturer at the University of Córdoba. While her earlier publications are framed mainly within the Functional Grammar theory of Simon C. Dik, her later work incorporates insights from the Goldbergian version of Construction Grammar, Systemic Functional Linguistics and Functional Discourse Grammar. She is editor of the volume Morphosyntactic Alternations in English.(Equinox Publishing, 2011) and co-editor of the themed issue Derivational Morphology in Functional Discourse Grammar (Word Structure 11.1, 2018).

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