ditransitive
Adjective
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Adjective
ditransitive (not comparable)
- (linguistics) Of a class of verbs which take both a direct and an indirect object. An example is 'give', which entails a giver (subject), a gift (direct object) and a receiver (indirect object).
- So far, we have considered only transitive Verbs which take a single NP Complement. However, there are a subset of transitive Verbs (known as ditransitive Verbs) which can take two NP Complements, as illustrated in (16) below (where the NP Complements are bracketed):
(16) (a) John gave [Mary] [a present]
(16) (b) The postman handed [me] [a parcel]
(16) (c) He showed [her] [his credentials]
(16) (d) He sent [his mother] [some flowers]
(16) (e) Never promise [anyone] [anything]
The relevant subcategorisation frame for Verbs used in this construction will be [— NP NP], indicating that they can take two NP Complements.
- So far, we have considered only transitive Verbs which take a single NP Complement. However, there are a subset of transitive Verbs (known as ditransitive Verbs) which can take two NP Complements, as illustrated in (16) below (where the NP Complements are bracketed):
- French: bitransitif
- Russian: двуперехо́дный
- Spanish: ditransitivo
ditransitive (plural ditransitives)
- (linguistics) A verb that takes both an object and an indirect object.
This text is extracted from the Wiktionary and it is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 license | Terms and conditions | Privacy policy 0.002