Cantonese & Mandarin datives

[Virginia Yip (LIN)]

Concerning verbs of future possession (e.g., offer, promise, bequeath,
award)
we made the point that Cantonese 'offer' and 'promise' allow neither
construction, but use a complementation construction instead ("I promise to
give you...").
I'd like to draw your attention to the following data from Angel Chan who
noted the possibility of prepositional dative and double dative with these
verbs:

offer 'tai4gung1'
PD: 	ngo5 ho2ji3  tai4gung1 gau2zit3        bei2   lei5
      I    can     offer     ten-percent-off   give  you
     "I can offer you a ten percent discount"

promise 'jing1sing4'
DO: 		keoi5 jing1sing4  ngo5 saam1 gin6 si6
          3SG   promise   me  three  CL  things
          "He has promised me three things."

PD :		keoi5 jing1sing4 li1 bun2 syu1 bei2  ngo5  
          3SG  promise  this CL  book give  me      
         "He has promised me this book!"

bequeath 'wai4lau4' 
PD:		keoi5  lau4     hou2do1  coi4caan2 bei2 go3  zai2
		3SG   leave    much     asset    give  CL  son
		"He has bequeathed his son a great fortune."

Virginia


-----Original Message-----
From: Henrietta Lempert [mailto:lempert at psych.toronto.edu] 
Sent: Wednesday, October 17, 2007 5:42 AM
To: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org
Subject: Cantonese & Mandarin datives

 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