Ditransitive Clauses

Abstract

In Tzotzil, ditransitive clauses (clauses containing an indirect object (‘3’) in addition to a 2) are a “favorite construction” (I borrow the term from Haviland (1981), but use it slightly differently). Ditransitive clauses occur frequently in speech, but more interestingly, they function as a kind of funnel, providing a uniform surface form or grid for a number of distinct syntactic constructions. Hence, in my view there are several types of ditransitive clauses, and the organization of the rest of this study depends on an important distinction between them, namely, the distinction between those ditransitive clauses where the 3 bears a thematic relation and those where it does not. The two principal clause types in which it does not are those involving possessor ascension and clause union. Chapters 8, 9, and 10 deal with properties of possessor ascension, chapter 11 with those of clause union.