Cantonese & Mandarin datives

[Henrietta Lempert]

 I have three students who hope to do a project on L2 acquisition
>of English datives and passives by L1 Cantonese and Mandarin speakers.
> They have received conflicting information from Chinese first
>language informants as to which sub-classes of English alternating
>datives can also alternate in Cantonese and Mandarin; which ones can
>only occur as prepositional datives (PDs), and which ones can only
>occur as double object datives (DO).  They would be grateful for any
>information regarding the following:
>
>1.  Punctual action involving unaccompanied transfer of an object from
>agent to recipient such as throw, toss, and kick (the subclasses are
>based on Pinker, 1989),
>
>Cantonese:   PD?                         DO?
>Mandarin:    PD?                          DO?
>
>2.  Verbs of future possession (e.g.,  offer, promise, bequeath, award)
>
>Cantonese:   PD?                         DO?
>Mandarin:    PD?                          DO?
>
>3.  Verbs of communication such as tell, write, e-mail, fax, telephone.
>
>Cantonese:  PD?                          DO?
>Mandarin:   PD?                           DO?
>
>
>4.  With respect to agentive passives (i.e., passives with a by-phrase
>in English),  are there are salient differences between Cantonese and
>Mandarin?  Chinese versus English?
>
>Many thanks,
>
>Henrietta lempert