Dativeshift
Dativeshift is a term in linguistics describing variation in how ditransitive sentences encode two internal arguments: the indirect object (the recipient) and the direct object (the theme). In languages with ditransitives, two common realizations are the double object construction (DOC), where the recipient precedes the theme after the verb (S V IO DO, as in “The teacher gave the student the book”), and the prepositional dative (PD), where the recipient is expressed as a prepositional phrase after the direct object (S V DO to IO, as in “The teacher gave the book to the student”). Dativeshift concerns how the dative argument can shift between these configurations, often for emphasis, information structure, or discourse focus.
In English, both DOC and PD are productive, and speakers can choose between them to highlight different
Factors influencing dative shift include animacy and weight of the objects, pronoun vs. full noun phrasing,