Dative verbs

In a recent paper, M. Rappaport Hovav and B. Levin (2008) challenge the predominant view of the English dative alternation, which takes all alternating verbs to have two meanings and, concomitantly, associates each meaning with a particular syntactic realization (e.g. S. Beck and K. Johnson 2004, G. Green 1974, K. Hale and S.J. Keyser 2002, H. Harley 2003, M. Krifka 1999, 2001, R. Oehrle 1976, S. Pinker 1989). On this accepted view, the first meaning, a caused possession meaning, schematized in (4a), is said to be realized by the double object variant (the (a) sentences in (1)-(3)), while the second meaning, a caused motion meaning, schematized in (4b), is said to be realized by the to variant (the (b) sentences).