To whom/whom

An intriguing thread. I don't have any answers – only a few notes:

1. I gave the boy ten pounds.
2. I gave ten pounds to the boy.
3. ?I donated ten pounds to the boy.
4. ?I donated the boy ten pounds.
5. I donated ten pounds to the church.
6. ?I donated the church ten pounds.

a) I'm interested in Paco's comment about French/Latin derived verbs. It seems to me that the flexible ditransitives such as 'buy', 'sell', 'give', 'show', etc belong to an older layer of English, whereas French/Latin-derived near-equivalents such as 'purchase', 'purvey', 'donate', 'demonstrate' etc belong to a later layer. If this is the case, the pattern of the flexible ditransitive may have become established while English still had a noticeable dative case; perhaps they then retained the privileges of position when the dative disappeared. (Although 'him/her/them' etc are historically datives, I'm not sure this in itself can explain the conundrum: in #1 there is no hint of dativeness in 'boys'.)

b) It's true that native speakers don't (as children) know which words are Germanic and which Franco-Latinate; but we tend to learn the latter at a much later stage. You have to learn 'donate' consciously: the meaning could not be learnt from context.

c) 'Donate' has a special meaning: 'to give something worth giving to a deserving body'. Value is built in on both sides of the equation. This is why I query #3 above.

d) I notice that the 'music' of #1 differs from that of #2, in terms of pitch and stress. That I think is how a native speaker knows whether the noun that follows 'give' is the 'gift' or the 'givee'.

e) There seems to be a brand of slightly basic ditransitive humour, among native speakers, e.g.

7. 'I was just showing Jo – ' 'Were you, indeed!' 'I was about to say, I was just showing Jo how to work the drinks machine...'

The play is on 'show = demonstrate' and 'show = expose one's genitalia to'. It seems to depend on deliberate confusion of the various kinds of object.

f) Some ditransitive-evil-twins are more flexible than others. I would be puzzled at first by #4 and #6 above, but:

8. ?'I purchased him a coffee.'

would be at least comprehensible.

MrP

Hello Mr P

I appreciate your message great! I agree to your suggestion that the ditransitive structure S+V+IO+DO might be limited to Teutonic verbs that people had already used before the Norman Conquest, though I have never investigated if there is such a structure in current French (I learned some French when I was young, but now I forgot all what I learned).

I think the so called 'generative grammar' could be used as one of the tools for us ESL students to understand the reason(s) why English people use a word the way as it is used. But at the same time I feel only the generative grammar is not enough to understand all the linguistic phenomena in English. Another tool would be the knowledge about the historic development of the English language. I have been looking for any good English grammar book where the grammar is described with a historic view comprehensively along with a view of syntactic theories, but still I can't find such kind of book. Do you know any?

paco

verbs of French origin can't have the nature of ditransitivity

Another way of conceptualizing this is "only monosyllabic verbs can be ditransitive".

Unfortunately there are exceptions regardless of which formulation you prefer:

She [offered / promised / guaranteed] me the job.

CJ

Hello CJ and Mr P

She [offered / promised / guaranteed] me the job.

You show indeed nice evidences against the hypothesis! But among them 'offer' was nearly 'pure' English. Its use (in the form of 'offrian') dates back to as far as 825. On the other hand 'guarantee' was imported as a noun and its use as a verb started not long ago (the oldest reference in OED dated as 1791). I heard 'promise' and 'guarantee' are used in the construction of SVOO almost only in the case where the first O is a personal pronoun. Is it true?

By the way I tried to find the use of 'Whom(Who) did you give it?" in Google. The result was virtually zero. They say either 'To whom(who) did you give it?" 'Whom(Who) did you give it to?". This fact is useful for me to catch the difference in the sense between 'SVOO' and 'SVO to O' constructions.

paco

Ah, shoot! You stole my thunder while I was busy studying my vocabulary cards with all those prepositions! I promise all of you [guys / dudes / blokes] that I won't be caught napping again.