Reverse Double Objects in Hakka Ditransitive*

This paper deals with the ‘reverse’ double object construction in Hakka, where the theme NP precedes the goal NP without being mediated by an adpositional goal marker. I show that the reverse V-theme-goal order is sensitive to verb types and argue that this construction takes an underlying dative structure with a non-thematic null prepositional goal marker. This formal syntactic account is shown to capture the word order alternations and grammatical properties observed in Hakka ditransitives.