Natural uses of dative constructions in English reveal that the boundaries between categoricity and gradience are fluid in both lexicon and grammar. 1 In the lexicon, the mapping between semantic classes of dative verbs and alternative syntactic constructions rests on probabilistic biases rather than strict categories. In the grammar of argument type positioning, even the strongest of constraints on ditransitive complements shows variability, while a very weak statistical pattern corresponds to near categorical regularities elsewhere. Both the lexical and the grammatical gradience can be modeled within Stochastic Optimality Theory, and combining them has surprising empirical consequences. 1.1 Lexical Gradience Many English ditransitive verbs appear in alternative dative PP and dative NP constructions: (1) “You don’t know how difficult it is to find something which will please everybody—especially the men.” “Why not just give them cheques? ’ I asked. “You can’t give cheques to people. It would be insulting. ” 2 (2) “You carrying a doughnut to your aunt again this morning? ” J.C. sneered. Shelton nodded and turned his attention to a tiny TV where 1 We thank our collaborator Anna Cueni, and for many stimulating discussions when we were first formulating the ideas of the present study, K.P. and Tara Mohanan. This work is based in
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