A ditransitive construction is a syntactic-semantic concept identified typologically in cross-linguistic studies. This construction is defined as consisting of a ditransitive verb, an agent argument (A), a recipient-like argument (R), a theme argument (T), and a fundamental semantic "transfer". There are various ways to code the recipients and themes from a typological perspective, and 'give' is considered a prototypical ditransitive verb. In Nuosu Yi, the 'give' construction and other three-argument constructions follow the same syntactic principles and share common semantic properties. The constructions can be formulated as either {NP1 [agent] -NP2[theme]-ka33-NP3[recipient/location]-VPI, or {NP2[theme]NPI[agent]-ka33-NP3[recipient/location]-VP), in which the coverb ka(33), "disposes" of the theme argument (NP2), which either precedes ka(33) or is at clause initial position due to topicalization. NPI is the agent and NP3 can be a recipient or a location. The three-argument ka(33) construction expresses an event in which the actor transfers or disposes of the theme to someone or somewhere. Nuosu Yi does not exhibit a true ditransitive construction from a syntactic perspective. Instead, serial verb constructions (SVC) are utilized with ditransitive verbs in terms of semantic properties from a cross-linguistic perspective. For example, the highly grammaticalized coverb ka(33) can be substituted by lexical verbs such as 'send', 'feed', 'sell', followed by the second verb 'give' in the sentence final position of the SVC. The verb 'give' in this SVC has been semantically bleached but has not yet grammaticalized to a dative case marker due to syntactic restriction as Nuosu Yi is a verb-final language. If both verbs in SVC have lexicalized meanings, then neither of them will undergo grammaticalization, such as 'boil' and 'eat' in the causative construction "T+boil+R+eat.CAUS". In this paper, we claim there are three subtypes of three-argument constructions in Nuosu Yi that exhibit conformity in both semantic and syntactic properties, i.e. disposal ka(33) constructions and strategies of serial verb construction. We demonstrate that Nuosu Yi does not exhibit a true syntactically ditransitive construction, nor does Nuosu Yi have true three-place verbs. We argue that lack of morphological case marking for disambiguating or identifying semantic roles of agent, theme, and recipient is the main reason for these structural properties. Hence, word order in Nuosu Yi is the primary means of argument alignment, and SVC is used to express three-argument events. SVC is a productive, powerful, and multifunctional construction and strategy in Nuosu Yi. This is the first descriptive data of ditransitive constructions and other three-argument constructions of Nuosu Yi, and the findings of this paper will shed a light on the theoretical study of linguistic typology.
