Alternation ‘Recipient double accusative alternation’ (Uncoded)

The existence of a double accusative coding pattern in Korean is well-known (Sohn 1999: 280, Yeon 2003: 136), and various constructions alternate with the present, double accusative coding pattern. The accusative-marked NP that is not accusative-marked in the alternative pattern seems to have a different status from one double accusative construction to another which is why they are treated differently here. This alternation has been reported for ditransitive verbs with the coding pattern NOM-DAT-ACC including benefactive complex predicates with juda, where the recipient/beneficiary; argument can be alternatively marked with an accusative case marker. Whereas in the NOM-DAT-ACC coding pattern the dative argument could follow the accusative argument - for example, whenever the dative-marked argument stands in preverbal focus position and not the accusative-marked argument - in the NOM-ACC-ACC coding pattern the word order seems to become stricter, with the accusative-marked recipient NP preceding the accusative-marked theme argument. It has been reported that in elicitation sessions some consultatns may reject this coding pattern as ungrammatical, and some other may acknowledge their existence, while at the same time remarking that it somehow sounds awkward (see O'Grady 1991: 53, for example, where this alternation is called 'dative advancement'). I assume that most of the time, this must be due to the lack of context in single-sentence elicitation and grammaticality checks, since I myself find this construction awkward sometimes although I am sure that I am using it frequently. Curiously enough - given the fact that having overt case marking (and overt NPs!) in every sentence in Korean seems unnatural - it has not been studied whether these mixed results from elicitation could be due to the fact that Korean case markers may bear some information-structural functions. The interaction with Korean case marking, case marking alternations and information structure has not been researched extensively, and it could be very interesting to look at whether the positional or prosodic information structure functions such as specific focus intonations or focus positions are still applicable in alternative coding patterns such as this double accusative construction. When a verb with a double accusative coding pattern is passivised, then this may result in a double-nominative coding pattern with the corresponding passive verb, as in ex. 314. Again this double-accusative to double-nominative change seems to pose some problems fo syntactic theory, and elicitation with consultants seems to lead to varying results. Please refer to O'Grady (1991: 134ff.) for more. Note that BEAT is an interesting case where a NOM-INSTR-ACC alternates with a double accusative coding pattern, but interestingly, only an extremely restricted set of lexemes seems to appear in such a construction, see ex. 254.

Verb Meaning Verb form Basic coding frame Derived coding frame Occurs Comment # Ex.