grammatically speaking...

[Laurence Horn]

At 7:06 AM -0500 1/10/03, Douglas Bigham wrote:
>Riddle me this, Batman....
>
>Just out of curiosity, does anyone get a *better* reading with a pronoun
>instead of a noun phrase?  For example: "donate me this lamp" sounds a lot
>worse than (while holding said lamp, saying) "donate me this".  Anyone share
>this opinion?
>
>Just wondering....
>
To the extent that this is true, it may represent part of a general
tendency for pronouns to cliticize onto the preceding verb and thus
become part of that word rather than a separate word.  I get the
distinction between pronouns and full NPs more clearly in other
contexts (and with "light" pronouns like "me", "him", "her", "them",
"it" rather than "this").  Thus:

I gave the man the book.
*I gave the man it.
(?)I gave him it.

She sent her sister the money yesterday.
*She sent her sister it yesterday.
(?)She sent her it yesterday.

This relates to stressable constituents (I feel embarrassed writing
about this on a list that includes Arnold), and has been treated by
way of a surface constraint that would also apply to other cases in
which a direct object clitic pronoun is separated from the verb by
intervening material, e.g.

I looked up the man/the number.
I looked up HIM (not her).   [non-clitic pronoun]
*I looked up him/it.

But in the "I gave him it", "She sent her it", the "it" doesn't count
as separated from the verb because the relevant verb is "gave'm",
"sent'r".

Not that any of this applies directly to "Donate me this."  Or the
new movie "Analyze Me THAT"  ;)

larry