Interesting developments in English syntax

[Ketsuban]

I was watching an artist stream the process of creating a picture, and the commissioner asked them a question about a character depicted (whose name is Abby) which caught my attention.

Oh, are you also adding Abby her glasses?

It struck me that simply turning add into a ditransitive verb (are you also giving Abby her glasses would be entirely unremarkable) has produced something structurally identical to a possessive construction found in some languages but generally not English: adding [Abby her glasses] = adding Abby's glasses.

[malloc]

Was this a native English speaker? This sounds like they could be carrying over semantics from their native language.

[Ketsuban]

As far as I know, yes.

[Glass Half Baked]

Very interesting, but without more examples I would assume this to be a slight disfluency, rather than a syntactic innovation.

[Darren]

I could see myself saying that, and maybe not even correcting myself.

Are you adding glasses?
Are you adding her glasses?
(!?) Are you adding Abby glasses?
(!??) Are you adding Abby her glasses?

Or of course it could be a native-lang calque. I've heard Germans say things like "John his house".

[Raphael]

I've heard Germans say things like "John his house".

Yup, that's common colloquial German. Though Germans who are intellectual snobs might take pride in the idea that they would never talk like that.

[Travis B.]

I've heard Germans say things like "John his house".

Yup, that's common colloquial German. Though Germans who are intellectual snobs might take pride in the idea that they would never talk like that.

Some people have gotten the idea that the modern English genitive is not descended from the OE genitive at all, but rather that "John's house" is derived from "John his house". Of course, this ignores use cases like "That house is John's" because "That house is John his" (!) doesn't make any sense.

[Lērisama]

I've heard Germans say things like "John his house".

Yup, that's common colloquial German. Though Germans who are intellectual snobs might take pride in the idea that they would never talk like that.

Some people have gotten the idea that the modern English genitive is not descended from the OE genitive at all, but rather that "John's house" is derived from "John his house". Of course, this ignores use cases like "That house is John's" because "That house is John his" (!) doesn't make any sense.

I think this is because John his house-type possession was apparently used in Early Modern English, so if they've read something old¹, the might have seen it, and assumed that because of apostrophes usually mean contraction has occurred somewhere, and the loss of the vowel in the OE genitive isn't well known.

¹ I think it might be in the King James' Bible, but I'm not trawling through it right now to look for a specific type of possession that isn't easy to Ctrl+F

[Travis B.]

Yup, that's common colloquial German. Though Germans who are intellectual snobs might take pride in the idea that they would never talk like that.

Some people have gotten the idea that the modern English genitive is not descended from the OE genitive at all, but rather that "John's house" is derived from "John his house". Of course, this ignores use cases like "That house is John's" because "That house is John his" (!) doesn't make any sense.

I think this is because John his house-type possession was apparently used in Early Modern English, so if they've read something old¹, the might have seen it, and assumed that because of apostrophes usually mean contraction has occurred somewhere, and the loss of the vowel in the OE genitive isn't well known.

¹ I think it might be in the King James' Bible, but I'm not trawling through it right now to look for a specific type of possession that isn't easy to Ctrl+F

https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/se ... %22%27s%22 states that 's occurs exactly 1578 times in the KJV, so it definitely was in use in formal writing at the time the KJV was written. It is very possible that the OE genitive never died out, and rather "John his house"-style possession was both innovated independent of it and then disappeared, possibly under the influence of a surviving genitive (i.e. a reduction of "his" was reanalyzed as the genitive).

[Darren]

I've never seen "John his house" constructions even in old writing. I think that if anything does influence L2 speakers, it's post-sibilant -'s in e.g. "James's house" where /dʒeimzɪz/ sounds a lot like /dʒeimz hɪz/, especially if they've been taught the form "James'" without the extra syllable.

[zompist]

Wikipedia's article on the his genitive is pretty good. Summary: this was a real thing in the 1600s and 1700s, and has analogs in other Germanic languages. But it doesn't go back to Old English and is not the source of the 's genitive. Though it may have influenced the use of the apostrophe.

[zompist]

Oh, are you also adding Abby her glasses?

It struck me that simply turning add into a ditransitive verb (are you also giving Abby her glasses would be entirely unremarkable) has produced something structurally identical to a possessive construction found in some languages but generally not English: adding [Abby her glasses] = adding Abby's glasses.

Going back to the original question... though a possessive interpretation happens to work in this case, it strikes me that the person is (ad hoc?) creating a ditranstive. Thus the structure is not

adding [Abby her glasses]

but

adding [Abby] [her glasses]

If we had the original speaker here, this could be confirmed by asking if they could say something like "Are you also adding Abby a necklace?" vs. "I don't like the style of Abby her glasses."

[Ketsuban]

Yeah, I'm not charging them with having intended a possessive meaning, I just noticed the potential development.

[Richard W]

Is it helpful to call give ditransitive? Most English transitive verbs can have an indirect object not marked by a preposition.

[Travis B.]

Is it helpful to call give ditransitive? Most English transitive verbs can have an indirect object not marked by a preposition.

I would not make a basic assumption that English transitive verbs can automatically be made ditransitive, as shown by this very thread (as for me at least adding an indirect object to add is very much not cromulent). So hence I would say that English has a lot of transitive verbs that can be made ditransitive in a lexicalized fashion, rather than that English transitive verbs can categorically be made ditransitive.

[Richard W]

Do we need to add you some language modules?

[Glass Half Baked]

Adding recipients/beneficiaries to verbs is common enough: "get you some good food at Golden Corral!" In American English, it's associated with low-status dialects, but nobody struggles to parse it, and most wouldn't bat an eye.

The issue is, the more ad-hoc the addition, the more common it is to see a pronoun, not a noun, in that slot. "Let's kill us a deer for supper" is reasonable, if dialectal. "Let's kill the ladies a deer to cook for supper," on the other hand, sounds much more forced.

I think if the sentence was "add her a pair of glasses," it wouldn't stand out so much as strange or innovative.

[Travis B.]

To me using add as ditransitive in this fashion simply does not work, whereas get is perfectly fine (and very common) as ditransitive even with a non-pronominal dative/benefactive argument, and even your example of kill as a benefactive ditransitive works.

[Man in Space]

"Let's kill the ladies a deer to cook for supper," on the other hand, sounds much more forced.

Not to me. That reads rather startlingly naturally for me.

[Travis B.]

"Let's kill the ladies a deer to cook for supper," on the other hand, sounds much more forced.

This one is grammatical for me.

I think if the sentence was "add her a pair of glasses," it wouldn't stand out so much as strange or innovative.

On the other hand, this one is not grammatical at all to me.