case and the theme is marked with the instrumental case: Similarly, in Lahu, both the patient of a monotransitive verb and the recipient of a ditransitive verb are marked with the postposition thàʔ: In secundative languages with passive constructions, passivation promotes the primary object to subject. For example, in Swahili: the recipient Fatuma is promoted to subject and not the theme zawadi 'gift'. Use in English Many languages show mixed indirective/secundative behavior. English, which is primarily indirective, arguably contains secundative constructions, traditionally referred to as dative shift. For example, the passive of the sentence John gave Mary the ball. is Mary was given the ball by John. in which the recipient rather than the theme is promoted to subject. This is complicated by the fact that some dialects of English may promote either the recipient (Mary) or the theme (the ball) argument to subject status, and for these dialects ' The ball was given Mary by John. (meaning that the ball was given to Mary) is also well-formed. In addition, the argument structure of verbs like provide is essentially secundative: in The project provides young people with work. the recipient argument is treated like a monotransitive direct object. Notes See also Object (grammar) Dative Ergativity Ditransitive verb Morphosyntactic alignment References Blansitt, E.L. Jr. (1984). "Dechticaetiative and dative". In Objects, F. Plank (Ed.), 127–150. London: Academic Press. Comrie, Bernard (1975). "Antiergative." Papers from the 11th Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, R. E. Grossman, L. J. San, & T. J. Vance (eds.), 112-121. Dryer, Matthew S. (1986). "Primary objects, secondary objects, and antidative." Language 62:808-845. Haspelmath, Martin (2013). "Ditransitive Constructions: The Verb 'Give'." In: Dryer, Matthew S. & Haspelmath, Martin (eds.) The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. (Available online at , Accessed on 2014-03-02.) LaPolla, Randy (1992). "Anti-ergative Marking in Tibeto-Burman.” Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 15.1(1992):1-9. Malchukov, Andrej & Haspelmath, Martin & Comrie, Bernard (eds.) (2010). Studies in ditransitive constructions. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. Trask, R. L. (1993). A Dictionary of Grammatical Terms in Linguistics Routledge, Linguistic typology