Request for good syntactic examples

[David Parkinson]

Hello Funknetters:
A friend is seeking to convince some colleagues of the (at least partial)
independence of syntax from semantics, and is looking for good and
reasonably incontrovertible examples of syntactic phenomena or alternations
which are hard to explain as deriving from their semantic content. If you
have a favorite cocktail party or classroom example of the donate/give or
"*who do you wanna read the books?" type, please send it along to me. I will
post a summary to FUNKNET as appropriate.
(Incidentally, I won't be unhappy if people try to argue that such examples
are in principle nonexistent... but maybe these arguments would be best
posted to the list, in the interests of sparking discussion.)

Thanks!
David Parkinson