The dative alternation in German: conditions for the licensing of PP with an

One of the characteristics of the dative alternation in German is that the PP that alternates with the dative is headed by the preposition an ‘to’. This article contends that an- PP is syntactically analyzed in the same way as the “pleonastic directional” described by Olsen (1996. Pleonastische Direktionale. In Gisera Harras & Manfred Bierwisch (eds.), Wenn die Semantik arbeitet: Klaus Baumgärtner zum 65. Geburtstag , 303–329. Tübingen: Niemeyer). Semantically, an- PP makes use of the scale of motion inherent in the VP to encode the change of possession and marks the final state not as a locational goal, but as a possessor. Hence, an- PP cannot appear when the final state of the scale is already expressed by deictic expressions with hin- ‘away from the speaker’ or her- ‘toward the speaker’ and a PP with a referential complement. By contrast, an- PP can be licensed with certain particle verbs because the particles do not contain referential expressions. This analysis can be applied to other verbs as well, such as zuwerfen ‘throw to’ and bringen ‘bring’. An- PP cannot occur with these verbs because their referential goal is semantically or lexically implied, which can also be verified using the corresponding verbs in Dutch. Furthermore, this article statistically shows that an- PP contributes to the fact that even a non-human locational entity, such as das Ministerium ‘the ministry’, represents a recipient.