Romance double object constructions and transitivity alternations

This paper discusses a new approach to Romance ditransitive constructions and argues against a quite general trend, which consists of attempting to mirror English facts by identifying clitic-doubled Spanish ditransitive constructions as Double Object Constructions (DOC), and non-doubled ones as Prepositional Constructions (PC) (Masullo 1992, Demonte 1995, Romero 1997, Cuervo 2003a,b). After a careful examination of the data, it is argued that Romance (Spanish, French and Catalan) ditransitive constructions instantiate DOC, whether they bear clitic doubling or not. Pronominalization facts in Catalan will support this analysis. Finally, a connection between this new view on Romance ditransitive constructions and some dative/accusative alternations in the area is presented.