He gave it me

[pne]

I think you can say both He gave it me and He gave me it (in the sense of He gave it to me), so word order is not the only thing marking theta roles (if I got my term right).

Some combination of context, typical roles, and animacy hierarchy? Vestiges of a dative/accusative distinction in pronouns, rather than being lumped together as "objective case"?

On the other hand, you can say (well, I can say) He gave me the book but not *He gave the book me.

Or am I (in finding He gave it me grammatical) transferring from German, where the typical word order is Er gab es mir? (Er gab mir es would probably be grammatical, but sounds quite strange to me stylistically. But with a noun, the order would usually be like that: Er gab mir das Buch. Er gab das Buch mir sounds unusual, perhaps if you wanted to emphasise that it was me to whom he gave the book, but even then you could express that with the more usual word order.)

Comments

[brad.livejournal.com]

Yeah, "He gave it me" isn't grammatical in English.

[node-ue.livejournal.com]

"He gave it me" is grammatical but it is not sensical. Perhaps this rephrase would help: "He gave me to it."

"He gave me the book" vs. "He gave the book me" is a similar situation - you could say it, but it wouldn't make a lot of sense (why would someone give you to a book?)

[sedesdraconis.livejournal.com]

I think you can say both He gave it me and He gave me it (in the sense of He gave it to me), so word order is not the only thing marking theta roles (if I got my term right).

I would say that He gave it me, in the sense of He gave it to me is not grammatical in modern English, but it is an archaicism which one occaisionally runs into.

[sparkofcreation.livejournal.com]

However, "He gave me the book" is perfectly grammatical. Not sure if pne was referring specifically to pronouns, or just the word order of such a sentence, using "it" instead of "DO" (which I suspect may be the case, based on the fact that he used "das Buch" in German). Also, "Give me [gimme] it" and "He gave me that" are grammatical.

As was said above, "He gave it me" is ungrammatical in English.

[sparkofcreation.livejournal.com]

BTW in Spanish the IO comes first ([él] me lo dio) with the IO often doubled ([él] me lo dio a mí), but in French the pronoun that's a person always comes before the one that's an object, no matter which is direct/indirect (if both are objects, it's IO then DO, as well). I remember French grammar better than vocab, so I won't try to come up with examples.

[pne.livejournal.com]

in French the pronoun that's a person always comes before the one that's an object, no matter which is direct/indirect (if both are objects, it's IO then DO, as well).

That's not how I remember it.

The way I remember it, the order is: 1) me, te, nous, vous (which can be either IO or DO); 2) le, la, les (only DO); 3) lui, leur (only IO).

So "He gives me it" is "Il me le donne" (me = IO, le = DO) but "You give him it" is "Tu le lui donne" (le = DO, lui = IO) with the opposite order (IO-DO vs. DO-IO).

And "He gave me to him" would be "Il me lui donne" (me = DO, lui = IO), I think.

[pne.livejournal.com]

BTW in Spanish the IO comes first

Same in Modern Greek, FWIW: [αυτός] μου το έδωσε [aftos] mou to edhose

[tungol.livejournal.com]

I momentarily mistake you for animate_mush every time I see that icon of yours.

[sedesdraconis.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I actually made her wwld icon for her, since she doesn't have any good graphics programs :) (except then she ran it through some ungodly windows program and reduced the quality after :P )

Fancy meeting another friend of animate_mush's here.

[tungol.livejournal.com]

I see :-)

[tungol.livejournal.com]

Also, my judgements are the same as yours.

[sovereigna.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't think either are grammatical.

He gave it me sounds like he lazy english I've heard used mostly in (funnily enough) England. It's not something I think of being said (at all) in Australia or Scotland (unless they're English)

But then He gave me it sounds like very immature english. Not used much at all if you're over the age of 5. You stop constructing sentences like that around the time you stop pointing at someone and saying "he did it".

Both of these are probably acceptable sentences in every day english, however you'd likely lose points for these examples on a test. (However, I did read about a school early in the year that was allowing the students to submit an essay in txt tlk. Gr8, huh? (Agh!)

[lnbw.livejournal.com]

Eeee. Both of those are questionable at best for me (though the first form is recognizeably archaic). I can say "He gave me the book" or "He gave the book to me," but only "He gave it to me" (unless, of course, I'm deliberately choosing a questionable form, which I do occasionally!).

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Where did these people learn their English?

There's nothing "immature" or "unacceptable" about "He gave me it" IMD. I'm not sure if this is yet another British/American difference or what.

I don't think it had ever occurred to me that the English and German usage doesn't line up on this point, but you're right. I can't explain why this either, only point out that you do see among other closely-related languages, e.g. Mandarin and Cantonese (where Mandarin has the English order and Cantonese the German).

[animate-mush.livejournal.com]

"He gave me it" is usually prescriptively forbidden - I know I've heard parents "correct" their children. To me, it has a slight oddness, probably stemming from prosodic considerations, since sentence final constituents need to be stressed, and "it" submits to such treatment only reluctantly. But it's certainly not non-standard by my intuitions at least.

"He gave it me" does feel contrastively non-standard or archaic. I can't make any claims about its attestation in contemporary English (has anybody tried google?) but Shakespeare definitely uses it. The quote I have in mind is from A Midsummer Night's Dream:

Have you the lion's part written?
I pray you - if it be, give it me,
For I am slow of study

If I had to guess, I would hypothesize that it is a more prosodically acceptable variant on "give me it" and therefore restricted to cases where the prosodic issue arises, rather than being a generally accessible option. For instance, I do not think that speakers who have (or had) "give it me" would also have "give the book me."

I think somebody should write a grant to get money to build a time machine and go back and run some 16th century perceptual experiments. Who's with me?