Russian давать + infinitive: 'to give', 'to let', or 'to have'?

Abstract

This article examines a variety of sentence types, differing by virtue of the presence/absence of certain syntactic constituents (direct/indirect object) and the semantic properties of those constituents (animacy, physical transferability, etc.). The conclusion is that the verb давать has thus far undergone only partial grammaticalization towards being a causative auxiliary; that the incompleteness of the verb's grammaticalization as a causative auxiliary is due primarily to the homonymy, and hence ambiguity, of certain surface structures. It is finally proposed that давать be viewed as two distinct lexical items: 'to give' and 'to let' (the latter subcategorized for a number of syntactic and semantic constraints).