Abstract Studies of the English dative alternation during the last three decades have not still reached an agreement on the becoming syntactic analysis of this alternation.

Abstract

Studies of the English dative alternation during the last three decades have not still reached an agreement on the becoming syntactic analysis of this alternation. The main goal of this article is to exhibit to that a study of the information structural properties of certain constructions can provide independent evidence for the adequacy of a particular syntactic analysis. Relying forward the empirical adequateness of the argument structural approach to focus fabric (Gussenhoven 1984; Selkirk 1995) we use accentual patterns as a criterion for syntactic representations. We argue that

...