A CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS OF INTERACTION VERBS WITH DATIVE COMPLEMENTS

Agentive two-place verbs with dative complements (e.g. German helfen ' help', folgen 'follow' are generally assumed to bear a lexical feature that blocks regular accusative linking for their nonsubject argument and indicates the selection of the dative case. In the present paper, it is argued that native selection of two-place verbs is cross-linguis tically systematic. Evidence for this claim is provided from one group of two-place verbs with dative complements that are called ''interact ion verbs.'' It is shown that the Polynesian dative-selecting two-plac e verbs (''middle verbs'') included in the data of Chung's (1978) inve stigation show a striking affinity in meaning to two-place verbs with native complements in four Indo-European languages of different famili es. This observation seriously challenges any account that treats two- place verbs with dative complements principally as idiosyncratic. Howe ver, Kiparsky's (1995) recent proposal to motivate the dative selectio n of two-place verbs semantically by the homogeneity of the events the respective verbs denote is rejected. lit the present approach, the ma rked linking pattern of these verbs is explained in terms of their low semantic transitivity. I assume that the semantic transitivity of a v erb with more than one argument is low if the thematic Poles of the ar guments show no agent-patient asymmetry.