Generating indirect objects in English

Abstract

It is a common experience in language study (and elsewhere) that a consideration of a few carefully chosen examples can allow us a neat, simple, even elegant solution; but that the more data we examine, the more complex the whole question becomes. In some such cases we are tempted to abandon discrete categories in favour of a ‘squish’ (Ross, 1972, 1975). English indirect object constructions seem to present this kind of problem.