Alternating constructions with ditransitive geben in present-day German
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Hilde De Vaere
Hilde De Vaere (born 1957) is a doctoral researcher at the Department of Linguistics at Ghent University. Her research focuses on the syntax–semantics interface, in particular the corpus-based study of alternating syntactic constructions with ditransitive verbs in present-day German.
,
Ludovic De Cuypere
Ludovic De Cuypere (born 1978, PhD Ghent University, 2007) currently combines a position as a teaching assistant at the Department of Linguistics at Ghent University, where he teaches statistics and provides statistical consultancy, with a part-time professorship at the Department of Linguistics and Literary Studies at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, where he teaches courses on English Linguistics and Research Methodology. His PhD dissertation dealt with the iconicity hypothesis in language. His research focuses on alternating syntactic constructions from multiple perspectives.
Klaas Willems (born 1965, PhD Ghent University, 1992) is a professor in General Linguistics at the Department of Linguistics at Ghent University. His main research interests are in the theory of language (including semiotics and the history of linguistics), the theory of semantics, and German grammar (with a focus on the syntax-semantics interface). Address: Department of linguistics, University of Gent, Blandijnberg 2, B-9000 Gent (Belgium).
Abstract
This paper reports on a corpus-based investigation of the verb geben in two alternating ditransitive constructions in present-day German with the Recipient either coded in the dative case (the indirect object construction, abbreviated: IOC) or by means of the PP an + accusative case (the prepositional object construction, POC). The study is based on a quantitative analysis of N=1,301 sentences (712 IOC and 589 POC) drawn from the Deutsche Referenzkorpus (IDS, Mannheim) which were annotated for 20 factors. Using a logistic regression analysis, we found evidence for the effect of 10 predictors (bootstrapped C-index=95%). We discuss our results in comparison to corpus-based research of the English dative alternation and point to some notable differences between both languages. In German, POC appears to be strongly correlated with collective recipients, collective agents, passive voice, and concrete and propositional transfer senses of the main verb geben. With regard to the semantics of geben, we argue that the quantitative findings are best accounted for on the basis of a general underspecified verb meaning ‘geben transfer’ that does not yet differentiate between the three possible verb senses (concrete, abstract, and propositional).
About the authors
Hilde De Vaere (born 1957) is a doctoral researcher at the Department of Linguistics at Ghent University. Her research focuses on the syntax–semantics interface, in particular the corpus-based study of alternating syntactic constructions with ditransitive verbs in present-day German.
Ludovic De Cuypere (born 1978, PhD Ghent University, 2007) currently combines a position as a teaching assistant at the Department of Linguistics at Ghent University, where he teaches statistics and provides statistical consultancy, with a part-time professorship at the Department of Linguistics and Literary Studies at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, where he teaches courses on English Linguistics and Research Methodology. His PhD dissertation dealt with the iconicity hypothesis in language. His research focuses on alternating syntactic constructions from multiple perspectives.
Klaas Willems (born 1965, PhD Ghent University, 1992) is a professor in General Linguistics at the Department of Linguistics at Ghent University. His main research interests are in the theory of language (including semiotics and the history of linguistics), the theory of semantics, and German grammar (with a focus on the syntax-semantics interface). Address: Department of linguistics, University of Gent, Blandijnberg 2, B-9000 Gent (Belgium).
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for providing helpful suggestions and comments on an earlier version of this article.
Appendix
A Appendix A Logistic Regression Model
lrm(formula=Construction ~ Voice + TransferSense + AgentAnim +
Metaphor + ThemePron + ThemeGiv + ThemeAnim + ThemeConc +
ThemeDef + ThemeIdiom + RecPron + RecGiv + RecAnim + RecConc +
RecDef + RecNum + RecProper + rcs(LengthDiff), data=geben,
x=TRUE, y=TRUE, penalty=0.89)
Penalty factors
| simple | nonlinear | interaction | nonlinear.interaction |
| 0.89 | 0.89 | 0.89 | 0.89 |
| Model Likelihood | Discrimination | Rank Discrim. | |||||
| Ratio Test | Indexes | Indexes | |||||
| Obs | 1268 | LR chi2 | 1093.11 | R2 | 0.763 | C | 0.958 |
| IOC(r-t) | 680 | d.f. | 24.69 | g | 4.172 | Dxy | 0.916 |
| POC(t-r) | 588 | Pr(>chi2) | <0.0001 | gr | 64.823 | gamma | 0.917 |
| max |deriv| | 1e-11 | Penalty | 20.16 | gp | 0.451 | tau-a | 0.456 |
| Brier | 0.080 | ||||||
| Coef | S.E. | Wald Z | Pr(>|Z|) | Penalty Scale | |
| Intercept | −0.3414 | 1.2992 | –0.26 | 0.7927 | 0.0000 |
| Voice=passive | 1.9130 | 0.5833 | 3.28 | 0.0010 | 0.6671 |
| TransferSense=concrete | 1.6035 | 0.4469 | 3.59 | 0.0003 | 0.7703 |
| TransferSense=propositional | 1.6587 | 0.6361 | 2.61 | 0.0091 | 0.7703 |
| AgentAnim=inanimate | −1.6615 | 0.4635 | –3.59 | 0.0003 | 0.8170 |
| AgentAnim=individual | −0.8272 | 0.2408 | –3.44 | 0.0006 | 0.8170 |
| AgentAnim=notexpressed | −0.7213 | 0.5343 | –1.35 | 0.1770 | 0.8170 |
| Metaphor=yes | −0.6328 | 0.5373 | –1.18 | 0.2389 | 0.6671 |
| ThemePron=pronominal | 1.1075 | 0.5829 | 1.90 | 0.0574 | 0.6671 |
| ThemeGiv=given | 0.2858 | 0.2889 | 0.99 | 0.3225 | 0.7703 |
| ThemeGiv=new | −1.0374 | 0.2513 | –4.13 | <0.0001 | 0.7703 |
| ThemeAnim=inanimate | −0.1903 | 0.7760 | –0.25 | 0.8062 | 0.6671 |
| ThemeConc=concrete | 2.4817 | 0.4569 | 5.43 | <0.0001 | 0.7703 |
| ThemeConc=propositional | 2.2824 | 0.6575 | 3.47 | 0.0005 | 0.7703 |
| ThemeDef=indefinite | −0.2533 | 0.2158 | –1.17 | 0.2405 | 0.6671 |
| ThemeIdiom=yes | −1.8423 | 0.9112 | –2.02 | 0.0432 | 0.6671 |
| RecPron=pronominal | −0.9878 | 0.3299 | –2.99 | 0.0028 | 0.6671 |
| RecGiv=given | −1.2010 | 0.2776 | –4.33 | <0.0001 | 0.7703 |
| RecGiv=new | 0.3527 | 0.2949 | 1.20 | 0.2317 | 0.7703 |
| RecAnim=individual | −1.2652 | 0.2611 | –4.84 | <0.0001 | 0.8170 |
| RecAnim=inanimate | −2.9904 | 0.4443 | –6.73 | <0.0001 | 0.8170 |
| RecAnim=underspecified | 0.4014 | 0.2900 | 1.38 | 0.1663 | 0.8170 |
| RecConc=concrete | 0.0391 | 0.8356 | 0.05 | 0.9627 | 0.6671 |
| RecDef=indefinite | −0.0249 | 0.3426 | –0.07 | 0.9421 | 0.6671 |
| RecNum=singular | 0.4466 | 0.2278 | 1.96 | 0.0500 | 0.6671 |
| RecProper=proper | −0.6114 | 0.3372 | –1.81 | 0.0698 | 0.6671 |
| LengthDiff | 0.2242 | 0.0609 | 3.68 | 0.0002 | 4.3937 |
| LengthDiff’ | −0.0246 | 0.1203 | –0.20 | 0.8381 | 4.4114 |
| LengthDiff’’ | −0.8149 | 0.9720 | –0.84 | 0.4018 | 0.4059 |
B Sample probabilities
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Supplemental Material
The online version of this article offers supplementary material (https://doi.org/10.1515/cllt-2017-0072).
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Unifying dimensions in coherence relations: How various annotation frameworks are related
- Alternating constructions with ditransitive geben in present-day German
- Less is more: why all paradigms are defective, and why that is a good thing
- Dependency profiles in the large-scale analysis of discourse connectives
- Productivity, vocabulary size, and new words. A response to Säily (2016)
- Predicting voice alternation across academic Englishes
- What we talk about when we talk about corpus frequency: The example of polysemous verbs with light and concrete senses
- Reduction of word-final obstruent-liquid-schwa clusters in Parisian French
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Unifying dimensions in coherence relations: How various annotation frameworks are related
- Alternating constructions with ditransitive geben in present-day German
- Less is more: why all paradigms are defective, and why that is a good thing
- Dependency profiles in the large-scale analysis of discourse connectives
- Productivity, vocabulary size, and new words. A response to Säily (2016)
- Predicting voice alternation across academic Englishes
- What we talk about when we talk about corpus frequency: The example of polysemous verbs with light and concrete senses
- Reduction of word-final obstruent-liquid-schwa clusters in Parisian French
