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영어

In this paper, I aims to show the need of a semantico-pragmatic analysis of English Dative Constructions. I introduce the semantic analysis of the iconicity principle and the pragmatic analysis of the given-new information strategy for the claim. I propose that we use the internal dative constructions when the agent and the recipient are conceptually closer and when the speaker consider what happened to the indirect object as more important than what happened to the direct object, or the speaker's attention focuses on the indirect object of new information. And we use the external dative constructions when the agent and the recipient are conceptually more distant and the speaker's attention is to direct object of new information. On the basis of our analysis, it is demonstrated by empirical data that the principle of iconicity and the discourse phenomenon of given-new information provide a satisfactory account of English dative constructions. Therefore, I conclude that English dative constructions do not show free variation but it is determined whether they are internal dative constructions or external dative constructions according to the conceptual distance and the information status of objects.