# "buy to" vs "buy for" **URL:** \ **Category:** ERG\ **Created:** [May 10, 2022, 6:37pm UTC](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/t/buy-to-vs-buy-for/762 "2022-05-10T18:37:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![arademaker](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/user_avatar/delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/arademaker/32/45_2.png) [@arademaker](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/u/arademaker)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2022, 6:37pm UTC](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/t/buy-to-vs-buy-for/762/1 "2022-05-10T18:37:41Z")
1. I bought a book for Ann. 2. I bought a book to Ann. According to Grammarly, the second sense is not grammatical. Why does ERG accept it? ---
**Author:** ![leonel](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/user_avatar/delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/leonel/32/451_2.png) [@leonel](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/u/leonel)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2022, 8:14pm UTC](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/t/buy-to-vs-buy-for/762/2 "2022-05-10T20:14:39Z")
Hi, @arademaker. I think Grammarly is wrong and the ERG is right. The alternation between the double object construction and the construction with a to-PP is a well-known fact of English. It is very common with transfer of possession verbs like _give_, _bring_, _buy_, etc. I bought her a book. I bought a book to her. The to-PP expresses the recipient, the for-PP a beneficiary. ---
**Author:** ![ebender](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/34f0e0/32.png) [@ebender](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/u/ebender)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2022, 8:27pm UTC](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/t/buy-to-vs-buy-for/762/3 "2022-05-10T20:27:33Z")
For me, _I bought a book to her_ only works if _bought_ is interpreted as a simple transitive and _to her_ is a modifier of _book_. @arademaker, what analysis are you seeing of this sentence in the ERG? ---
**Author:** ![Dan](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/eada6e/32.png) [@Dan](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/u/Dan)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2022, 9:07pm UTC](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/t/buy-to-vs-buy-for/762/4 "2022-05-10T21:07:05Z")
First, the dative variant in “I sold a book to her” is idiosyncratically not possible for “buy”, so that reading is not available in the ERG for “I bought a book to her”, and this is the reading that Grammarly correctly also rules out. However, as @ebender observes, there is a reading where a book could be dedicated to “her”, and hence “a book to her” is something that I could buy, as in “I knew that any book with a dedication to Emily Dickenson would be valuable, so I bought a book to her that I found in a little bookshop.” There is still another reading, even more pragmatically limited, where “to her” modifies “bought a book” as a locative-path PP, more readily understood with a verb such as “sleep” as in “It was a long trip, so we slept to Paris and then tried to stay awake for the rest of the journey.” It’s awkward pragmatically to come up with a situation where an act of buying a book is performed while along some path with “her” as the destination, but consider “I like to buy a gift for anyone that I visit, but had forgotten until I was on my way to my friend Mary in Paris, so resorted to the in-flight shopping catalogs. I bought a book to her.” This is still awkward, but gets better with a city name rather than “her”: “I was on a ship with a small bookstore, so I bought books (all the way) to London.” Since the ERG does not know which kinds of activities are likely to be performed along paths, the grammar accepts “I [bought a book] to her” as syntactically well formed. ---
**Author:** ![leonel](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/user_avatar/delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/leonel/32/451_2.png) [@leonel](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/u/leonel)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2022, 12:54am UTC](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/t/buy-to-vs-buy-for/762/5 "2022-05-11T00:54:13Z")
Thanks, @Dan and @ebender for the clarification. I was not aware that _to buy_ represents an “exception” to the dative alternation. ---
**Author:** ![arademaker](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/user_avatar/delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/arademaker/32/45_2.png) [@arademaker](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/u/arademaker)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2022, 2:43pm UTC](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/t/buy-to-vs-buy-for/762/6 "2022-05-11T14:43:35Z")
Hi @ebender , the first reading that I got from ERG (trunk) is the one below: ```auto [ TOP: h0 INDEX: e2 RELS: < [pron<0:1> LBL: h4 ARG0: x3] [pronoun_q<0:1> LBL: h5 ARG0: x3 RSTR: h6 BODY: h7] [_buy_v_1<2:8> LBL: h1 ARG0: e2 ARG1: x3 ARG2: x8] [_a_q<9:10> LBL: h9 ARG0: x8 RSTR: h10 BODY: h11] [_book_n_of<11:15> LBL: h12 ARG0: x8 ARG1: i13] [_to_p_state<16:18> LBL: h1 ARG0: e14 ARG1: e2 ARG2: x15] [proper_q<19:23> LBL: h16 ARG0: x15 RSTR: h17 BODY: h18] [named<19:22> LBL: h19 ARG0: x15 CARG: "Ann"] > HCONS: < h0 qeq h1 h6 qeq h4 h10 qeq h12 h17 qeq h19 > ] ``` Note that we have `buy` transitive and `to Ann` attached to the event of `buy` with `_to_p_state`. In the cases where ‘to Ann’ is attached to `_book_n_of` the `_to_p` was used. ---
**Author:** ![arademaker](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/user_avatar/delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/arademaker/32/45_2.png) [@arademaker](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/u/arademaker)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2022, 2:52pm UTC](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/t/buy-to-vs-buy-for/762/7 "2022-05-11T14:52:37Z")
> [@Dan](#): > > First, the dative variant in “I sold a book to her” is idiosyncratically not possible for “buy”, so that reading is not available in the ERG for “I bought a book to her”, and this is the reading that Grammarly correctly also rules out. Thank you for the prompt response @Dan !!! So Grammarly interpreted that I was trying to give the third complement for the verb `buy`… But I found two senses on the file `surface.smi` where an ARG3 is acceptable for “buy”. Hope I understood what are you calling the “dative variant” and I should be probably saying that the dative variant is not possible for “buy to…”, right? ```auto ar@tenis terg % rg buy_v etc/surface.smi 3518: _buy_v_1 : ARG0 e, ARG1 i, ARG2 i, [ARG3 i]. 3519: _buy_v_back : ARG0 e, ARG1 i, ARG2 i. 3520: _buy_v_from : ARG0 e, ARG1 i, ARG2 p, ARG3 i. 3521: _buy_v_into : ARG0 e, ARG1 i, ARG2 i. 3522: _buy_v_off : ARG0 e, ARG1 i, ARG2 i. 3523: _buy_v_out : ARG0 e, ARG1 i, ARG2 i. 3524: _buy_v_up : ARG0 e, ARG1 i, ARG2 i. ``` and I got this sense in the first analysis of (3) 1. I bought a book from Ann. ```auto [ LTOP: h0 INDEX: e2 [e SF: prop TENSE: past MOOD: indicative PROG: - PERF: -] RELS: < [pron<0:1> LBL: h4 ARG0: x3 [ x PERS: 1 NUM: sg IND: + PT: std] ] [pronoun_q<0:1> LBL: h5 ARG0: x3 RSTR: h6 BODY: h7] [_buy_v_from<2:8> LBL: h1 ARG0: e2 ARG1: x3 ARG2: x8 [ x PERS: 3 NUM: sg IND: +] ARG3: x9 [x PERS: 3 NUM: sg IND: +] ] [_a_q<9:10> LBL: h10 ARG0: x8 RSTR: h11 BODY: h12] [_book_n_of<11:15> LBL: h13 ARG0: x8 ARG1: i14] [proper_q<21:25> LBL: h15 ARG0: x9 RSTR: h16 BODY: h17] [named<21:24> LBL: h18 CARG: "Ann" ARG0: x9] > HCONS: < h0 qeq h1 h6 qeq h4 h11 qeq h13 h16 qeq h18 > ICONS: < > ] ``` ---
**Author:** ![Dan](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/eada6e/32.png) [@Dan](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/u/Dan)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2022, 3:33pm UTC](https://delphinqa.ling.washington.edu/t/buy-to-vs-buy-for/762/8 "2022-05-11T15:33:03Z")
The verb “buy” can certainly have three arguments, as we see in “I bought Mary a book.” But as noted, unlike many verbs taking two NP objects such as “give” or “send”, “buy” does not have the variant where the two complements are a direct object NP and a PP headed by “to”. There is a paraphrase of the above sentence with an NP and a PP: “I bought it for her” but since almost any verb can be modified by a for-PP, the ERG currently does not analyze the “for her” as the ARG3 of “buy”, instead treating the PP as a modifier of “bought it”. I would be glad to know of some syntactic or semantic test that would show that the for-PP must in some instances be treated as a complement (the ARG3) rather than a modifier of “buy”.