Core and Noncore Datives in French

This chapter investigates the syntactic and semantic properties of core and noncore datives in French. It is shown that despite their superficial similarity, core and noncore datives present several distinctive properties, some of which were not previously noted for French. The chapter proposes that core and noncore datives have their origin in different underlying structures: the former originate as the complement of a MOTION subevent of transitive verbs, whereas the latter are “second” subjects of a stative predicate, either base-generated in this position or raised out of the theme, when the theme contains a Part-noun. The analysis reaches generalizations concerning the lexico-semantic decomposition of verbal predicates appearing with core and noncore datives.