The family of German dative constructions

The chapter describes the variety of structures with datives in Valency Grammar and then in the framework of Goldberg’s Construction Grammar (1995; 2006). It addresses issues related to the semantic roles that can be expressed with dative objects, but also the difference between valency-dependent datives and free datives that appear in usage. The constructionist model offers new avenues for a unified description of constructions with datives, both for valency-dependent and free datives, and even for phraseologisms with a dative object. But German being a morphologically complex language, the constructionist model cannot do without describing the valency properties of the verbs in the constructions. Finally, the study provides evidence for the claim that constructions with a dative build a family.