| Popis: |
Alternating Dat-Nom/Nom-Dat verbs in Icelandic are notorious for instantiating two diametrically opposed argument structures: the Dat-Nom and the Nom-Dat construction. Since the discovery of this verb class in Icelandic, considerable work has been carried out on different aspects of the nature of these verbs in Icelandic and related languages. Yet, what is missing from the literature is a systematic study of the distribution of the relevant verbs across the two argument structure constructions in language use and whether all alternating verbs instantiate both argument structure constructions to the same degree. For this purpose, we have carried out a study of 15 verbs, five alternating ones, and as a control, five ordinary Nom-Dat verbs and five non-alternating Dat-Nom verbs. Our findings show that alternating verbs instantiate the Nom-Dat construction in 54% of the cases, and the Dat-Nom construction in 46% of the cases on average for four of the five verbs when both arguments are full NPs, although considerable statistical differences are found between the five verbs. Another remarkable finding is that when the two arguments are pronouns, the Nom-Dat construction takes precedence over the Dat-Nom construction. |
