In the beginning was a to-phrase

Abstract

In this article, we reply to the objections raised against a connection between double object constructions (DOCs) and to-constructions and present new arguments showing the empirical and theoretical advantages of derivational analyses over nonderivational ones. We argue that to-constructions and DOCs share a common substructure—where the theme is higher than the goal—that construction-based analyses fail to capture, both crosslinguistically and English-internally. We also argue that variation in the lexical properties of verbs and adpositions is the right tool to account for the alternation.