Dative verbs

In some languages, including English, verbs such as give, send, and throw, which can be used to describe events of transfer, show two options for expressing their arguments, jointly referred to as the dative alternation, illustrated in (1)-(3) with English data. (1) a. Terry gave Sam an apple. b. Terry gave an apple to Sam. (2) a. Martha sent Myrna a package. b. Martha sent a package to Myrna. (3) a. Leigh threw Lane the ball. b. Leigh threw the ball to Lane. In a recent paper, Rappaport Hovav and Levin (2006) challenge the predominant view of the English dative alternation, which takes all alternating verbs to have two meanings and, concomitantly, associates each meaning with a particular syntactic