Verbs of this type involve three semantic roles—a Donor transfers possession of some Gift to a Recipient. There are two basic construction types, both with Donor in A syntactic relation; one has the Gift and the other the Recipient as O:

There is a variant of construction II in which the preposition with is inserted before the post-O Gift NP:

IIw. John (Donor) supplied the army (Recipient) with bully beef (Gift)

Some verbs occur in both I and II, others only in one of these constructions. Some verbs must take with, for some with is optional—shown as II(w)—and for a third set with is not permissible in construction II. Thus:

I and II—give, hand (over), lend, sell, rent, hire, pay, owe, bequeath

I and II(w)—serve, feed, supply

I and IIw—present

I only—donate, contribute, deliver, let

II only—tip

IIw only—reward, bribe

Construction I focuses on the Gift, which is then in O slot; these sentences centre on ‘giving a book’ (or other Gift). Constructions II and IIw focus on the Recipient, in O slot; they centre on ‘giving Tom’ (or some other Recipient). Suppose John wanted to sell his Caxton Bible to raise money; this would be described with the Gift as O, e.g. John sold his Caxton Bible (to Tom, or whoever). But suppose instead that Tom begs to be allowed to purchase the Bible; John doesn’t need to sell it but he likes Tom and is prepared to oblige him—in this circumstance it would be appropriate to say John sold Tom his Caxton Bible, with the Recipient as O.

An instance of a particular role should generally have specific reference in order to be a candidate for the O syntactic slot. One could say John gave the Red Cross a hundred dollars alongside John gave a hundred dollars to the Red Cross, but scarcely *John gave good causes a hundred dollars (since good causes is too vague to be an acceptable O), only John gave a hundred dollars to good causes.

Donate and contribute focus on the Gift that the Donor makes available (others will also be giving to that Recipient). These verbs only occur in I, with the Gift as O. (Bequeath is most used in I, again with focus on the Gift, although for many speakers II is also possible.) Reward ‘give in appreciation for some achievement’, bribe ‘give in recompense for doing something illegal’ and tip ‘give in return for some service’ focus on the Recipient and are restricted to II or IIw; the important point is that this person is being rewarded, bribed or tipped, with the actual nature of the Gift being of secondary interest.

We suggested that construction II is derived from I by putting the Recipient role in O syntactic relation, with Gift being retained as ‘second object’ (many speakers can passivize on either Recipient or Gift in II, e.g. Tom was given a book (by John), A book was given Tom (by John) ). Besides give, verbs which occur in II include hand (over) ‘give by hand’, lend ‘give for a limited period’, sell ‘give in exchange for a sum of money’, pay ‘give money in exchange for some service’, owe ‘have an obligation to give, according to social conventions’, bequeath ‘arrange to give on the Donor’s death’.

Rent and hire have similar meanings, but there are differences. One can rent or hire a car, but only rent an apartment, not—in normal circumstances—hire an apartment. It appears that rent is ‘give the use of for a limited period in exchange for a sum of money’ whereas hire is ‘give control of for a limited period in exchange for a sum of money’. Let, which has a meaning similar to rent, is essentially an abbreviation of let have, with the implication that monetary compensation is involved. It can occur only in frame I, i.e. John let the house to Tim, not *John let Tim the house (although we find let have in a construction similar to II John let Tom have the house (for a highish rental)).

Construction II is used for the direct transfer of ownership of some specific Gift. Construction IIw tends to be used to describe a more general act, along the lines of ‘make available’—compare The ladies gave the soldiers warm socks (each soldier might have been given a pair by one lady) with The ladies supplied the soldiers with warm socks (the ladies might here have delivered a large box, from which the soldiers could choose socks as they wished and needed). Some verbs occur in both II and IIw, enabling us to draw out a semantic contrast. Thus They fed us with junk food at that camp (but most of us didn’t eat it) and They fed us lots of vitamins. The last sentence—without with—carries a definite expectation that the vitamins were transferred to (i.e. consumed by) the Recipients.

Construction IIw can be used with supply ‘give as much as needed of some commodity’, feed ‘supply with food; make eat’ and serve ‘give food and/or drink, in a culturally acceptable manner’; IIw is also employed with present ‘give in a formal manner’, reward and bribe because here the focus is on the type of giving that the Recipient experiences, with the nature of the Gift being to some extent inferrable from the verb (something valuable with present, and either a sum of money or something that can easily be converted into money with reward and bribe).

Note that IIw may also be used with a verb like pay, where with highlights the special nature of the Gift, e.g. Mary paid John with a kiss (not *Mary paid John a kiss or *Mary paid a kiss to John). Or Mary paid John with a silver dollar (when he had expected to receive a dollar bill).

Some transitive MOTION verbs may, with appropriate NP referents, add a ‘giving’ sense to their basic meaning, e.g. take/throw an apple to Mary. The syntactic consequence of this is that these verbs may, just when they do carry an implication of giving, occur in construction II (which is not normally available to MOTION verbs), e.g. take/throw Mary an apple.

For give, all three roles must normally be stated—no constituent can be omitted from John gave a book to Tom, or from John gave Tom a book. However, an adverb such as out or away may be added—to give and to other verbs from this type—indicating a general giving activity, and the Recipient can then be omitted, e.g. John gave out/away lots of books (to his pupils). Other, more specific verbs can allow one role (other than Donor) to be omitted. Thus, lend, sell, rent, hire and supply can all omit reference to a Recipient; the focus is on the commodity that the Donor sells, supplies, etc.—it is assumed that they will do this to any potential Recipient (e.g. She sells stamps). The Gift need not be stated for pay, bribe, tip, reward, contribute, feed. Here the verb indicates the nature of the giving activity; the unmarked Gift is a sum of money for all of these verbs save feed, for which it is food. Serve may, in different senses, omit either Gift (We’ll serve the Queen first) or Recipient (They serve a lovely quiche in the corner cafe´) but not both at once.

Market has the meaning ‘put on sale’, with no particular Recipient in mind; there are only two roles for this verb, e.g. John (Donor) marketed his produce (Gift). Exchange and trade describe reciprocal activities, where several people are both Donor and Recipient and are grouped together as referents of the A NP, e.g. John and Mary (Donors and Recipients) exchanged hats (Gifts).

A further set of GIVING verbs, including borrow, buy, purchase, accept, receive, rent and hire, occur in the construction:

III. Tom (Recipient) bought a book (Gift) (from John (Donor))

Borrow is the converse of lend, buy and purchase of sell, and accept and receive are close to being converses of give. Rent and hire function as converses of themselves—John hired a boat to Mary implies Mary hired a boat from John, and vice versa.

If the A relation is filled by Recipient, as in III, then the O relation must be Gift. The Donor role can be a peripheral constituent marked by from; but it can freely be omitted.

There is also the OWN subtype, related to GIVING, which includes have, lack, get, obtain, come by, gain, own and possess. These verbs require two roles—Owner and Possession. The Possession corresponds to Gift, while Owner can relate to both Donor and Recipient, e.g. John (Owner) had a Saab (Possession), then he (Donor) gave it (Gift) to Mary (Recipient) so now she (Owner) has a Saab (Possession).

Have refers not to an activity but to a general relationship between two roles; it has a very wide semantic range, e.g. I have a stereo/a daughter/a headache/a wonderful idea/a good dentist. Lack, the complement of have, is used to draw attention to someone’s not having a thing that they might be expected to have. Get, obtain and come by carry a meaning of becoming, i.e. ‘come to have’—compare I have a Ford and I got a Ford yesterday. Gain is often used for getting something in addition to what one had before, e.g. gain weight, gain promotion, My shares gained fifteen pence. Own implies legal or official right to a thing—Now that the mortgage is paid off, I really own this house. Possess indicates that there is a strong emotional or mental connection between Owner and Possession—She possesses a good sense of humor/a fine brain, or He doesn’t possess a single suit (possess is used here partly to draw attention to what this lack tells us about his character).

Compare the use of own and possess in His father owns an old sedan but John possesses a fine new red sports car—the verb possess implies that John is proud of his car, almost that it is an extension of his personality. (Note that the passive use of possess, as in She is possessed by the devil, seems to be a separate, homonymous lexeme.) We explained the different passivisation possibilities of own verbs in terms of these differences of meaning.

Have can substitute for most (perhaps all) instances of possess, but only for own in general statements (John owns/has two cars), not in deictically referring expressions (John owns that car, scarcely *John has that car). The general relationship indicated by have can alternatively be ex-pressed by the clitic ’s (which goes onto the last word of an NP), by the preposition of or by the verb belong to. Whereas the other verbs of the OWN subtype have Owner as subject, belong to has Possession as subject, e.g. John owns that car, That’s John’s car, That car belongs to John.

(The verbs have and get also belong to the MAKING type; e.g. She got him to run, She had him running.)

The verb lose has a number of related senses—it can be the opposite of gain, e.g. lose money; or of find from ATTENTION, e.g. lost my wallet; or of win from COMPETITION, e.g. lose the big game.