grammar In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraints, a field that includes doma ...

, a ditransitive (or bitransitive) verb is a

transitive verb A transitive verb is a verb that accepts one or more objects, for example, 'cleaned' in ''Donald cleaned the window''. This contrasts with intransitive verbs, which do not have objects, for example, 'panicked' in ''Donald panicked''. Transiti ...

whose contextual use corresponds to a subject and two

object Object may refer to: General meanings * Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept ** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place ** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter * Goal, an ...

s which refer to a theme and a recipient. According to certain linguistics considerations, these objects may be called ''direct'' and ''indirect'', or ''primary'' and ''secondary''. This is in contrast to monotransitive verbs, whose contextual use corresponds to only one object. In languages which mark

grammatical case A grammatical case is a category of nouns and noun modifiers ( determiners, adjectives, participles, and numerals), which corresponds to one or more potential grammatical functions for a nominal group in a wording. In various languages, nomin ...

, it is common to differentiate the objects of a ditransitive verb using, for example, the

accusative case The accusative case ( abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: 'me,' 'him,' 'her,' 'us,' and ‘t ...

for the direct object, and the

dative case In grammar, the dative case ( abbreviated , or sometimes when it is a core argument) is a grammatical case used in some languages to indicate the recipient or beneficiary of an action, as in "Maria Jacobo potum dedit", Latin for "Maria gave Jacob ...

for the indirect object (but this morphological alignment is not unique; see below). In languages without morphological case (such as English for the most part) the objects are distinguished by word order and/or context.

In English

English has a number of generally ditransitive verbs, such as ''give'', ''grant'', and ''tell'' and many

s that can take an additional argument (commonly a beneficiary or target of the action), such as ''pass'', ''read'', ''bake'', etc.: :''He gave Mary ten dollars.'' :''He passed Paul the ball.'' :''Jean read him the books.'' :''She is baking him a cake.'' :''I am mailing Sam some lemons.'' Alternatively, English grammar allows for these sentences to be written with a

preposition Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...

(''to'' or ''for''): (See also

Dative shift In linguistics, dative shift refers to a pattern in which the subcategorization of a verb can take on two alternating forms, the oblique dative form or the double object construction form. In the oblique dative (OD) form, the verb takes a noun ph ...

) :''He gave ten dollars to Mary.'' :''He passed the ball to Paul.'' :''Jean read the books to/for him.'' :''She is baking a cake for him.'' :''I am mailing some lemons to Sam.'', etc. The latter form is grammatically correct in every case, but in some dialects the former (without a preposition) is considered ungrammatical, or at least unnatural-sounding, when the direct object is a pronoun (as in ''He gave me it'' or ''He gave Fred it''). Sometimes one of the forms is perceived as wrong for idiosyncratic reasons (

idiom An idiom is a phrase or expression that typically presents a figurative, non-literal meaning attached to the phrase; but some phrases become figurative idioms while retaining the literal meaning of the phrase. Categorized as formulaic language ...

s tend to be fixed in form) or the verb simply dictates one of the patterns and excludes the other: :''*Give a break to me'' (grammatical, but always phrased ''Give me a break'') :''*He introduced Susan his brother'' (usually phrased ''He introduced his brother to Susan'') In certain dialects of English, many verbs not normally treated as ditransitive are allowed to take a second object that shows a beneficiary, generally of an action performed for oneself. :''Let's catch ourselves some fish'' (which might also be phrased ''Let's catch some fish for ourselves'') This construction could also be an extension of a reflexive construction. In addition, certain ditransitive verbs can also act as monotransitive verbs: :"David told ''the children'' a story" – Ditransitive :"David told ''a story'' – Monotransitive

Passive voice

Many ditransitive verbs have a

passive voice A passive voice construction is a grammatical voice construction that is found in many languages. In a clause with passive voice, the grammatical subject expresses the ''theme'' or '' patient'' of the main verb – that is, the person or thing ...

form which can take a direct object. Contrast the active and two forms of the passive: Active: :''Jean gave the books to him.'' :''Jean gave him the books.'' Passive: :''The books were given to him by Jean.'' :''He was given the books by Jean.'' Not all languages have a passive voice, and some that do have one (e.g. Polish) do not allow the indirect object of a ditransitive verb to be promoted to subject by passivization, as English does. In others like Dutch a passivization is possible but requires a different auxiliary: "krijgen" instead of "worden". E.g. ''schenken'' means "to donate, to give": :Active: ''Jan schonk hem de boeken'' – John donated the books to him. :Passive: ''De boeken werden door Jan aan hem geschonken.'' :Pseudo-passive: ''Hij kreeg de boeken door Jan geschonken.''

Attributive ditransitive verbs

Another category of ditransitive verb is the attributive ditransitive verb in which the two objects are semantically an entity and a quality, a source and a result, etc. These verbs attribute one object to the other. In English, ''make'', ''name'', ''appoint'', ''consider'', ''turn into'' and others are examples: *''The state of New York made Hillary Clinton a Senator.'' *''I will name him Galahad.'' The first object is a

direct object In linguistics, an object is any of several types of arguments. In subject-prominent, nominative-accusative languages such as English, a transitive verb typically distinguishes between its subject and any of its objects, which can include b ...

. The second object is an

object complement In grammar, an object complement is a predicative expression that follows a direct object of an attributive ditransitive verb or resultative verb and that complements the direct object of the sentence by describing it. Object complements are co ...

. Attributive ditransitive verbs are also referred to as

resultative In linguistics, a resultative (abbreviated ) is a form that expresses that something or someone has undergone a change in state as the result of the completion of an event. Resultatives appear as predicates of sentences, and are generally composed ...

verbs.Fordyce-Ruff, Tenielle. 2015. Beyond the basics: Transitive, intransitive, ditransitive and ambitransitive verbs. Advocate. Online: https://commons.cu-portland.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1015&context=lawfaculty

Morphosyntactic alignment

The

morphosyntactic alignment In linguistics, morphosyntactic alignment is the grammatical relationship between arguments—specifically, between the two arguments (in English, subject and object) of transitive verbs like ''the dog chased the cat'', and the single argument ...

between arguments of monotransitive and ditransitive verbs is explained below. If the three arguments of a typical ditransitive verb are labeled D (for Donor; the subject of a verb like "to give" in English), T (for Theme; normally the direct object of ditransitive verb in English) and R (for Recipient, normally the indirect object in English), these can be aligned with the Agent and Patient of monotransitive verbs and the Subject of intransitive verbs in several ways, which are not predicted by whether the language is nominative–accusative, ergative–absolutive, or active–stative. Donor is always or nearly always in the same

case Case or CASE may refer to: Containers * Case (goods), a package of related merchandise * Cartridge case or casing, a firearm cartridge component * Bookcase, a piece of furniture used to store books * Briefcase or attaché case, a narrow box to ca ...

as Agent, but different languages equate the other arguments in different ways: * Indirective languages: D = A, T = P, with a third case for R * Secundative or dechticaetiative languages: D = A, R = P (the 'primary object'), with a third case for T (the 'secondary object') * Neutral or double-object languages: D = A, T = R = P * Split-P languages: D = A, some monotransitive clauses have P = T, others have P = R

Notes

References

*Cheng, L. L.-S., Huang, C.-T. J., Audrey, Y.-H., & Tang, C.-C. J. (1999). Hoo, hoo, hoo: Syntax of the causative, dative, and passive constructions in Taiwanese. ''Journal of Chinese Linguistics Monograph Series, 14'', 146–203. *Lee, Hui-chi. (2011). Double object construction in Hainan Min. ''Language and Linguistics, 12''(3), 501–527. * Haspelmath, Martin. (2005)
Argument marking in ditransitive alignment types
''Linguistic Discovery, 3''(1), 1–21. *Haspelmath, Martin. (2008). Ditransitive Constructions: Towards a New Role and Reference Grammar? In R. D. Van Valin (Ed.), ''Investigations of the Syntax–Semantics–Pragmatics Interface'' (pp. 75–100). John Benjamins. *Haspelmath, Martin. (2013). Ditransitive Constructions: The Verb 'Give'. In M. S. Dryer & M. Haspelmath (Eds.), ''The World Atlas of Language Structures Online''. Retrieved from http://wals.info/chapter/105 *Haspelmath, Martin. (2015). Ditransitive constructions. ''Annual Review of Linguistics, 1'', 19–41. *Huang, Chu-Ren & Ahrens, Kathleen. (1999). The function and category of GEI in Mandarin ditransitive constructions. ''Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 27''(2), 1–26. *Huang, Han-Chun. (2012). Dative Constructions in Hakka: A Constructional Perspective. ''Journal of Hakka Studies, 5''(1), 39–72. *Liu, Feng-hsi. (2006). Dative Constructions in Chinese. ''Language and Linguistics, 7''(4), 863–904. *Malchukov, A., Haspelmath, M., & Comrie, B. (2010)
Ditransitive constructions: A typological overview
In A. Malchukov, M. Haspelmath, & B. Comrie (Eds.), ''Studies in Ditransitive Constructions: A Comparative Handbook'' (pp. 1–64). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. *''Person'', Anna Siewierska (Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics, 2004) *Paul, Waltraud & Whitman, John. (2010). Applicative structure and Mandarin ditransitives. In M. Duguine, S. Huidobro, & N. Madariaga (Eds.), ''Argument Structure and Syntactic Relations: A cross-linguistic perspective'' (pp. 261–282). John Benjamins. *张美兰 (Zhang Mei-Lan). (2014). ''汉语双宾语结构:句法及其语义的历时研究''. Beijing: Tsinghua University Press (清华大学出版社). {{lexical categories, state=collapsed Transitivity and valency