In the Beginning Was a to-Phrase

Abstract

In this paper we reply to the objections raised against a connection between Double Object Constructions (DOC) and to-constructions and present new arguments showing the empirical and theoretical advantages of derivational analyses over non-derivational ones. We argue that to-constructions and DOCs share a common substructure—where the theme is higher than the goal—that construction-based analyses fail to capture, both crosslinguistically and English-internally. We also argue that variation on the lexical properties of verbs and adpositions is the right tool to account for the alternation.