The majority of Dutch trivalent verbs taking both a Patient and a Recipientargument allow for two different complementation patterns: theRecipient is either encoded as a bare NP in a double object pattern (Jefgeeft Piet een boek) or as a PP headed by aan (Jef geeft een boek aanPiet). As for the function of this variation (known as Dative Alternation),various authors have suggested semantic explanations, often basedupon the notion of affectedness. lt is clear, however, that the hypotheticalsubtle semantic differences between the two constructions may beoverridden by pragmatic factors . This paper presents the results of aninvestigation into the correlation between information structure andDative Alternation in Dutch.
