Double Object Construction

Definition:

The double-object construction (DOC) is a syntactic pattern in which a ditransitive verb takes two noun phrase objects — an indirect object (recipient) and a direct object (theme) — without a preposition. In English: “She gave [him] [a book]” (DOC) vs. “She gave [a book] [to him]” (prepositional dative). The two patterns form the dative alternation.

In-Depth Explanation

The DOC is a distinctive feature of English (and some other Germanic languages) that doesn’t directly translate to many other languages.

English DOC pattern: V + NP(recipient) + NP(theme)

• “She gave him a book.”
• “He told her a story.”
• “I baked them a cake.”

Prepositional dative pattern: V + NP(theme) + PP(to/for recipient)

• “She gave a book to him.”
• “He told a story to her.”
• “I baked a cake for them.”

Not all ditransitive verbs allow both patterns:

• “I donated a book to the library” ✓ / *”I donated the library a book” ✗
• “She explained the problem to me” ✓ / *”She explained me the problem” ✗

Why this matters for language learners:

The DOC doesn’t exist in Japanese. Japanese always uses particle-marked arguments:

• 先生が学生に本をあげた。(The teacher gave the student a book.)
• に marks recipient, を marks theme — always. There is no unmarked DOC pattern.

Japanese learners of English must learn to produce and comprehend the DOC, which can feel unnatural because the recipient appears where an object should be, without any marking particle equivalent to に.

English learners of Japanese sometimes try to produce DOC-like structures by dropping particles or placing the recipient directly before the object — both errors that result from L1 transfer of the DOC pattern.

Related Terms

• Ditransitive Verb
• Dative Alternation
• Argument Structure
• Transitivity

See Also

• Japanese Particles
• Sakubo

Research

• Goldberg, A. E. (1995). Constructions: A Construction Grammar Approach to Argument Structure. University of Chicago Press. — Foundational constructionist analysis of the DOC as a construction carrying “caused possession” meaning.
• Bresnan, J., Cueni, A., Nikitina, T., & Baayen, R. H. (2007). Predicting the dative alternation. In G. Bouma et al. (Eds.), Cognitive Foundations of Interpretation (pp. 69–94). Royal Netherlands Academy of Science. — Corpus-based analysis of factors governing the DOC vs. prepositional dative choice.