Del Datiu a l'acusatiu. Un canvi sintàctic en procés en llengües romàniques i basc

From dative to accusative. An ongoing syntactic change in
Romance and Basque
In Catalan, as well as in other Romance languages and Basque, there are
several verbs which can take a dative- or accusative-marked complement
of person, in Basque, a dative- or absolutive-marked one. This is the case of
Catalan verbs trucar phone, telefonar phone, contestar answer, robar
rob, pagar pay, pegar hit and disparar shoot, among others. This case
alternation is indeed a transition from dative to accusative. We are dealing
with a process of syntactic change which reflects different stages of evolution
depending on the dialectal or even idiolectal variety. In order to analyse this
alternation, or this change from dative to accusative, we assume the idea
that an unergative intransitive verb such as trucar (made up of a light verb
and a nominal, as in fer truc make a phone call) followed by a complement
denoting person actually corresponds to a ditransitive structure, this is
to say, a structure with a direct and an indirect object (fer truc a algú make
a phone call to someone). Likewise, we assume that, as in several ditransitive
constructions, there is an applicative head relating the direct complement
(truc) and the indirect complement (a algú). The properties of this
functional applicative head will allow us to explain the change from the use
of a dative complement (Li telefono) to the use of an accusative complement
(El telefono) in the early stages in the process of change. Finally, we will see
that in the final stage the process results in a true transitivization of the
structure.