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givenness were simplified into two categories. The theme and beneficiary phrase was defined as „given‟ if first, its referent was mentioned in the previous ten lines
of discourse „evoked‟, or second, it was a first or second person pronoun denoting a „situationally evoked‟ referent. All others were „non-given‟. The
examples of given and non-given theme and beneficiary are given below. See also Appendices 1 and 2.
9. was rather the result of principle than of personal predilection. When Mr.
West had made
a sketch for the Regulus
, and submitted it to His Majesty,
after some
verb :
made
theme :
a sketch
: non-given beneficiary :
the Regulus
: given
2.2.5 Pronominality of Theme and Beneficiary
The feature pronominality of theme and beneficiary refers to whether the theme or beneficiary was headed by pronouns or not. Different nominal
expression types, such as pronouns, proper names, and common nouns have been found to affect the choice of syntactic alternations Silverstein 1976, Aissen
1999, O‟Conor
et al.
2004 in Bresnan 2010. The various categories of nominal expressions were ranked to Local person Pronoun 3
rd
Proper noun 3
rd
Human 3
rd
Animate 3
rd
Inanimate 3
rd
. The findings suggest that 1
st
or 2
nd
person pronouns are marked when they are subjects of transitive clauses, but not when they are objects.
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In some research of dative construction, the nominal expression of theme and recipients were coded in several coding systems. Cueni 2004 in Bresnan
2007 coded theme and recipients in dative data set into seven categories. The nominal expression types were given values
„personal pronoun‟
her
, „impersonal pronoun‟
someone
, „demonstrative pronoun‟
that
, „proper noun‟
Jeanne
, „common noun‟
a native African
, „gerund‟
employing some foreigners
, and „partitive‟
the rest of the team
. Bresnan 2007 simplified this coding system into two. In particular, pronominality was simplified to phrases headed by
personal, demonstrative, indefinite, or reflexive pronouns from those headed by non-pronouns such as nouns and gerunds.
This research occupies the categorization by Bresnan 2010, with similar categorization from the one he made in 2007, yet defining
„pronouns‟ as personal including
it, them
and generic
you
, demonstrative, or reflexive. Indefinites is excluded from the categorization. However, basically the feature is coded in
binary variable pronoun and non-pronoun See the examples below to clarify the feature pronominality of theme and beneficiary See also Appendices 1 and 2
10.
dear master, youll be cleared. Mar. Marcel aside. Play
him some trick
to
frighten him and hell confess all. Ber. Bertrand
verb :
play
theme :
some trick
: non-pronoun beneficiary :
him
: pronoun
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2.2.6 Concreteness of Theme
