THE DOUBLE OBJECT CONSTRUCTION AND THEMATIZATION/EXTRACTION

This paper presents an analysis of the double object construction within the framework of Harley and Noyer' s (1998, 2000) Distributed Morphology. It is shown that double-object verbs decompose into three heads, the light verb vCAUSE, V (l-node) denoting the resultant state of the action identified by the composite overt verbal form, and a null preposition P. The V takes PP in its complement, which is the underlying structure for a possessive relation between the two objects. In this structure, the human first object raises to the specifier of the VP from the complement position of P in the same way that the human locative argument in the get- and have-constructions moves to the subject position. The present analysis can account for a parallelism concerning non-extractabilty of an object between double object constructions and unaccusative/passive constructions along the lines of Chomsky's (2001) minimalist approach.