30 represents the coefficient of feature 1,
β2 represents the coefficient of feature 2, and so
forth.
When the constant and coefficients were obtained from the mixed-effect binary logistic, the formula above can be completed and was able to predict the
occurrence of certain grammatical alternation, in this research casebenefactive construction. The probabilistic formula gives us the percentage of certain instance
to take benefactive PP or double object construction. In addition, from the computed data in the regression models, the research could obtain the model fit
accuracy of the corpus probabilistic formula of benefactive construction.
2.5 Related Studies
The first related study by Colleman 2007 aimed to examine the semantic evolution of the English and Dutch ditransitives over the last three to four century
later Modern EnglishDutch. He focused on the constructions of ditransitivedouble object in English and Dutch which showed that the
constructions are formally and semantically quite similar. Ditransitive consists of a subject and unmarked NP objects. V-slot can be filled by verbs of giving + verbs
from a number of other, semantically related classes e.g.
promise, send
. Especially for Dutch ditransitive, the semantic structure consists of semantic core
„beneficial transfer of a concrete entity from an agent to a willing recipient‟. Additionally, extensions include various semantic dimensions „direction of
transfer‟, nature of the transferred entity‟. In the study, Colleman took the corpus data from CLMET extended
version, complied by H. De Smet: literary texts drawn from Project Gutenberg
31
etc. ; three subperiods: 1710-1780, 1780-1850, 1850-1920, adding up to 15 million words De Smet, 2005 and from a similar self-compiled corpus of later
Modern Dutch literary texts drawn from dbnl.org; four subperiods: 1640-1710, 1710-1780, 1780-1850, 1850-1920, adding up to 10,5 million words.
The findings showed that the semantic retraction happened. Both in English and Dutch, the semantic range of the ditransitive seems to have narrowed
rather than broadened over the investigated period. The study concluded that there were 4 uses of ditransitive in English and Dutch have either disappeared from the
Late Modern period, or are on the decline in terms of lexical possibilities andor frequency. The ditransitives included “benefactive” ditransitive, „dispossesion‟,
„banishment‟, „envy‟ and „forgive‟: attidutinal ditransitives. All 4 of them are semantically quite distant from the central „Agent causes Recipient to receive
Patient‟ sense. Another research on corpus linguistics was conducted by Nia 2009.
Emphasizing on the significant feature of ditransitive verbs that is they are mostly or usually used in sentences that bear benefactive role, she conducted the study on
benefactive verbs in Double Object Construction DOC in English sentences. The benefactive role is a thematic or semantic role that shows an argument benefitting
from what another argument does. The study answered the questions of what the syntactic features of the benefactive verbs in DOC in English sentences are, and
of what the semantic features of the benefactive verbs in DOC in English sentences are.
Nia collected the data from five novels. There were 608 data obtained, sentences with ditransitive clause pattern with the following details: 112 data
32
taken from
the Man in The Brown Suit,
128 data taken from
The Runaway Jury
, 248 data taken from
Scarlett
, 64 data taken from
To Kill A Mocking Bird,
and 56 data from
Gaijin.
Every datum was then analyzed using conceptual structure CS in order to find if the datum indicates benefactive features. Data with benefactive
features were then analyzed based on clause structure, the benefactive role the verbs assign and the meanings of the benefactive verbs.
The findings revealed because of the conceptual structure CS, the ditransitive or benefactive verbs in double object construction DOC in English
assign three specific benefactive roles, namely beneficiary, recipient, and goal. Benefactive verbs may appear in two types of clauses, the double object
construction DOC with a structure of S+PV+IO+DO, and the DOC with prepositions with the structure of S+PV+O+PREP+OP. Another valuable
finding is that the benefactive verbs have inherent meaning of „make available‟ MAva, „of creation‟ VoCr, „of performance‟ VPrf, „of preparation‟ VPre,
and verbs with idiomatic meanings VIdi. The third study on corpus which becomes the main reference to my study
is the study on dative construction by Bresnan
et al.
2007. Applying the probabilistic model, they are able to predict the occurrences of dative construction
with 95 model fit accuracy. The study also gave insight on how to use the mixed-effect binary logistic regression model to obtain the coefficients which then
are used to formulate the corpus probabilistic model. The study found out that thirteen features are relevant to the choice of dative construction. The features
include
definiteness of theme, semantic class
‘
communication
’
, semantic class
‘
obtaining possession
’
, length different, pronominality of theme, discourse
33 givenness of theme, structure pararelism, concreteness of theme, person of
reciepient, number of theme, definiteness of recipient, semantic class
‘
transfer of possession
’
, discourse givenness of recipient, pronominality of recipient, and animacy of reciepient.
The fourth study, which is the study on benefactive construction done by Theijssen
et al.
2009 found four features to be significant in the choice of benefactive construction. They analyze the benefactive construction in adult and
child data. They found
syntactic complexity, discourse givenness of theme,
number of theme, and semantic verb class ‘communication’ significant to the
choice of benefactive construction.
The other interesting result of this study is that the adult and child data does not seem to greatly different. They argue that this
due to the children tend to imitate the constructions made by adult as closely as possible.This study proposed the validity test of the data using ten-fold cross-
validation technique which is then also employed in this research.
2.6 Theoretical Framework
