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In:Causation, Permission, and Transfer: Argument realisation in GET, TAKE, PUT, GIVE and LET verbs
Edited by Brian Nolan, Gudrun Rawoens and Elke Diedrichsen
[Studies in Language Companion Series 167] 2015
► pp. 463–490

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Information-structural encoding of recipient in non-canonical alignments of Persian

A constructional account

 | Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
Published online: 14 January 2015
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https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.167.16moe
This chapter aims to study the prepositional marking and the postpositional marking of the recipient in the Persian non-canonical ditransitive alignments, which are associated respectively with a particular role that the recipient as topic or exhaustive focus plays in the information-structural representation of the benefactive event. I will argue that overriding of the theme and recipient by each other with respect to topicality, grammatically achieved by utilizing two distinct operations including preposing and left-dislocation, determines the intended grammatical marking of the recipient. Moreover, the pragmatic alternation between the two types of coding portrays a constructional pattern which will be accounted for in terms of a Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) framework.
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