Ditransitive Constructions: The Verb 'Give'
Simple clauses · one world map for each value
WALS codes 378 languages for this feature. The most frequent value, “Indirect-object construction”, covers 189 of them (50%); the least frequent, “Mixed”, covers 40.
That value is most frequent in Eurasia (77% of the 103 languages coded there) and least frequent in Australia (21% of 43).
Among families with at least eight coded languages, Indo-European is the most uniform: 18 of 19 have “Indirect-object construction”.
Pama-Nyungan is the most divided, its largest group reaching only 10 of 29.
Indirect-object construction189 languages · 50%
Double-object construction84 languages · 22%
Secondary-object construction65 languages · 17%
Mixed40 languages · 11%
One map per value; each dot is a language WALS codes with that value.
By macro-area
| Value | Africa | Eurasia | Papunesia | Australia | North America | South America |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Indirect-object construction | 35 | 79 | 33 | 9 | 17 | 16 |
| Double-object construction | 40 | 7 | 7 | 12 | 10 | 8 |
| Secondary-object construction | 6 | 8 | 15 | 13 | 14 | 9 |
| Mixed | 6 | 9 | 12 | 9 | 1 | 3 |
| All values | 87 | 103 | 67 | 43 | 42 | 36 |
Inside the largest families
| Family | Coded | Most frequent value | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Austronesian | 46 | Indirect-object construction | 48% |
| Niger-Congo | 38 | Double-object construction | 74% |
| Sino-Tibetan | 31 | Indirect-object construction | 65% |
| Pama-Nyungan | 29 | Indirect-object construction | 34% |
| Afro-Asiatic | 28 | Indirect-object construction | 71% |
| Indo-European | 19 | Indirect-object construction | 95% |
| Austro-Asiatic | 10 | Indirect-object construction | 50% |
| Uto-Aztecan | 9 | Double-object construction | 67% |
| Eastern Sudanic | 8 | Double-object construction | 50% |
| Trans-New Guinea | 8 | Secondary-object construction | 38% |
Languages to explore
The most fully coded languages with each value.
- Indirect-object construction: French, Russian, Finnish, Spanish, Turkish, Hungarian
- Double-object construction: Swahili, Vietnamese, Tukang Besi, Zulu, Burmese, Mangarrayi
- Secondary-object construction: Hausa, Greenlandic (West), Chamorro, Mapudungun, Yaqui, Yoruba
- Mixed: English, Indonesian, Mandarin, Tagalog, Arabic (Egyptian), Lango