Abstract The semantic range of ditransitive verbs in Modern English has been at the center of linguistic attention ever since the pioneering work of Pinker (1989. Learnability and cognition: The acquisition of argument structure. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press). At the same time, historical research on how the semantics of the ditransitive construction has changed over time has seriously lagged behind. In order to address this issue for the Germanic languages, the Indo-European subbranch to which Modern English belongs, we systematically investigate the narrowly defined semantic verb classes occurring in the ditransitive construction in Gothic, Old English and Old Norse-Icelandic. On the basis of data handed down from Proto-Germanic and documented in the oldest layers of the three Germanic subbranches, East, West and North Germanic, respectively, we show that the constructional range of the ditransitive construction was considerably broader in the earlier historical stages than now; several subclasses of verbs that could instantiate the ditransitive in early Germanic are infelicitous in the ditransitive construction in, for instance, Modern English. Taking the oldest surviving evidence from Germanic as point of departure, we reconstruct the ditransitive construction for an earlier proto-stage, using the formalism of Construction Grammar and incorporating narrowly defined semantic verb classes and higher level conceptual domains. We thus reconstruct the internal structure of the ditransitive construction in Proto-Germanic, including different levels of schematicity.

中文翻译：

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重建原始德语的双重及物结构：哥特式，古英语和古北欧冰岛语

摘要自从平克（Pinker）的开创性工作（1989年，易学性和认知性：论据结构的获得）以来，现代英语中双及物动词的语义范围一直是语言关注的中心，剑桥，马萨诸塞州，麻省理工学院出版社。同时，关于双及物结构的语义如何随时间变化的历史研究严重滞后。为了解决日耳曼语（现代英语所属的印欧语分支）的这一问题，我们系统地研究了在哥特式，古英语和古北欧-冰岛语的双及音结构中出现的狭义语义动词类别。根据原始德国人传来的数据，并分别记录在东，西和北日耳曼三个日耳曼支行的最旧层，我们发现，在历史早期阶段，双及结构的构造范围比现在大得多；可以在日耳曼语早期实例化双及物动词的动词子类在例如现代英语中的双及物构词中并不明显。以日耳曼语中尚存的最久远的证据为出发点，我们使用构造语法的形式主义，并结合了狭窄定义的语义动词类和更高级别的概念域，为早期原型重构了双及音结构。因此，我们在原始德语中重建了双传递构造的内部结构，包括不同级别的示意图。