Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 October 2010
An indirect object can be interpreted as a Provider or as a Recipient. The evidence considered in this article suggests that the two interpretations can be morphologically analytic in Chinese and typologically parametrized for certain natural classes of verbs in English and Chinese. Two VP projections are proposed for the ditransitive construction. The head of the lower VP can be phonologically realized or null. The content of the null verb is parametrized across languages. The contrasts in indirect object interpretations in these languages are explained in terms of the lexical meanings of the null verb. The contrasts in verb occurrence restrictions in these languages are accounted for by the interpretable feature compatibilities in head adjunction from the lower to the higher VP.