Alternation vs. variation in Old English

Alternation in English

It has been noted repeatedly that although many verbs do occur in both syntactic patterns, some verbs only occur in one of the two patterns. For example, verbs such as cost and deny are widely described as occurring only with the DO construction whereas verbs such as drag and yell only with the PO construction. In addition, although certain verbs have been observed in both syntactic patterns, t...

Deriving the Structure of Variation from the Structure of Non-Variation in the English Dative Alternation∗

sense, depending on the verb and context), and the other of which, the goal (also “recipient” or “indirect object”), denotes the recipient or destination.1 In the double object construction (1), the goal NP immediately follows the verb, and is in turn immediately followed by the theme NP. The prepositional construction (2), by contrast, places the theme NP immediately after the verb, while the ...

The Dative Alternation in African American English : Researching Syntactic Variation and Change in a

Recent research has shown the dative alternation in English to be a productive arena for examining the relationship between group-level variation and the internalization of individuals’ grammars. Experimental methods (e.g., Bresnan and Ford 2010) and the analysis of large published corpora (e.g., Bresnan et al. 2007) have revealed subtle cross-dialect differences for this variable. The current ...

The dative alternation in African American English: Researching syntactic variation and change across sociolinguistic datasets

Recent research has shown the dative alternation in English to be a productive arena for examining the relationship between group-level variation and the internalization of individuals’ grammars. Experimental methods (e.g., Bresnan and Ford 2010) and the analysis of large published corpora (e.g., Bresnan et al. 2007) have revealed subtle cross-dialect differences for this variable. The current ...

Moving spaces: Spelling alternation in English noun-noun compounds