Ditransitive constructions with two human non-agentive arguments

This paper is a corpus-based study of non-prototypical ditransitive constructions with two highly salient - because human - non-agentive arguments. We evaluate claims made in earlier studies about this type of construction, using data from English, Dutch, and Polish corpora. Our study confirms that ditransitives with two human non-agents are (very) infrequent in discourse, and - depending on the argument coding strategy of a specific language - may involve ambiguity concerning the assignment of the Theme and Recipient roles. These characteristics are reflected in the formal expression of these constructions across languages. In addition, our data shows the effects of individual lexical verbs in determining frequency and expression patterns of non-prototypical ditransitives.