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SOUTHERN AMERICAN ENGLISH PERSONAL DATIVES: THE THEORETICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF DIALECTAL VARIATION

University of Göttingen

CLARE J. DANNENBERG

Virginia Polytechnic Institute

The Southern Double Object Construction, a regular form in Southern vernacular varieties of American English, is well attested. Among speakers of Southern Vernacular English, its use is not stigmatized, and it appears that it can be exchanged variably with its mainstream English approximate, the "self" reflexive (e.g., She_i went to the store to get her_i some candy vs. She_i went to the store to get herself_i some candy). In this article, we contextualize the Southern Double Object Construction within the scope of syntactic literature on double object constructions. We contend that although syntactic theories, such as the Principles and Parameters model, can explain Southern Double Object Constructions in general terms, they overlook idiosyncratic, language-specific properties that we argue, like Fillmore, Kay, and O'Connor (1988), constitute theoretically important information essential to evaluation of a grammar.