Ditransitive predicates and dative arguments in Maltese

•We explore the syntax of ditransitive predicates in Maltese.•We distinguish three distinct argument structure realizations for Maltese ditransitives.•Canonical datives correspond to LFG restricted objects.

This paper is concerned with the syntactic expression of three argument (ditransitive) predicates in Maltese. We provide the first detailed description of the ditransitive constructions found in Maltese, which have been largely ignored in the substantial literature on ditransitive predicates, and show that the primary means of expression for these predicates uses a canonical dative construction. We argue that the canonical dative construction (with ditransitive predicates) is distinct from both a double object construction and a prepositional oblique construction in terms of the mapping of arguments to surface grammatical functions. We provide an analysis of Maltese ditransitives in the Lexical Mapping Theory of Lexical Functional Grammar.