How many benefit from the Possessive Dative in Lithuanian

The article discusses the expression of inalienable Possession, in which the Possessor is human and the predicate is transitive. This paper focuses on the syntactic and semantic differences of the possessive Dative in the sentences Jonas bučiuoja Onutei į ranką resp. Jonas pakšteli Onutei į ranką. According to Andrej Malchukov’s (2005) notion of gradable transitivity and the data from The Corpus of the Contemporary Lithuanian Language, the present study concluded that the value of predicate transitivity has impact on the morphosyntactic marking of the Possessor. By the criterion of decreasing object patientivity, it can be observed, that morphosyntactic marking of patient object, expressing a directly affected Possessor, correlates with the scale Acc >Acc / Dat >Dat (bučiuoja mane >pakšteli mane / man; smogia man >smogtelėjo man). The lexical aspect of the predicate influences the morphosyntactic marking of the patient object, which expresses an inalienable Possessor. The Possessor Dative as a predicate argument appears typically with a predicate of achievements (smogti, vožti), and is often expected with semelfactives (pakštelėti, plekštelėti). Free Dative of Possessor occur often with a predicate of activities or accomplishments (bučiuoja man į skruostą)