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Are sentences like the following valid?

  1. He donated the charity five hundred dollars.
  2. She donated the children every penny she had.
  3. We donated the library a large collection of books.
  4. They won't donate the school any more supplies.
  5. Would you donate your sister a kidney?

All of these sound perfectly natural to me. But I can't find this definition (or any similar examples) in any dictionary, and Huddleston & Pullum (2002) claim that "donate" can't be used with an indirect object. Am I crazy?

(I'm in the Northeast US, in case this is a regionalism.)

alphabet
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    To be honest, none of those seem natural to me; I'd pot a 'to' after every one of those 'donates.' But I may be the crazy one. – Heartspring Feb 26 '23 at 15:05
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    In other words, does donate work like give? – user 66974 Feb 26 '23 at 15:06
  • @user66974 Yes. – alphabet Feb 26 '23 at 15:06
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    "Donate" is to only. – BillJ Feb 26 '23 at 15:07
  • All examples amount to asking if baby formula is made for babies or with babies. – Yosef Baskin Feb 26 '23 at 15:09
  • It doesn't work that way in California, for one. – Tinfoil Hat Feb 26 '23 at 15:18
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    Donate takes an "indirect object" -- i.e, a receiver constituent -- but it does not undergo the Dative Alternation (the rule that relates I gave him the book and I gave the book to him). Like explain, another 3-place verb with the same peculiarity: He explained the answer to me, but not *He explained me the answer. – John Lawler Feb 26 '23 at 15:32
  • One can say 'He donated five hundred dollars' just as one can say 'He explained the answer'. But colloquially, we do not accept a second object. 'He passed me the salt', however, is colloquially acceptable. – Nigel J Feb 26 '23 at 15:47
  • I'm very surprised to learn that this is nonstandard, but apparently people are unanimous that this is either a rare colloquial use (see the answer from @TinfoilHat) or just wrong (as the commenters here state). – alphabet Feb 26 '23 at 16:11
  • In my experience "donate" cannot be used ditransitively. It can, of course, take a direct object but the recipient must be positioned in a PP: "He donated the prize money to a local charity". Note that "a local charity" is object of "to", not object of "donated". – BillJ Feb 26 '23 at 16:15
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    @Heartspring I agree they don't seem natural, but I think that in BrE you would most likely say Someone donated something to a recipient. Example - "Joe donated books to a charity shop." – Peter Jennings Feb 26 '23 at 16:35
  • Incidentally, I would avoid using the term 'dative shift' since English does not have a dative case. – BillJ Feb 26 '23 at 16:39
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    I wouldn't avoid using the term Dative Shift or Dative Alternation, because it's the usual name for the construction. English doesn't have any cases, certainly not a dative, it's true. But it's a name, not a description. Not everyone is confused. – John Lawler Feb 26 '23 at 19:20
  • Perhaps, but it's a misleading name and hence best avoided. – BillJ Feb 27 '23 at 09:44
  • Let's have an extended argument about whether to use commonly understood terms or technically correct ones. Obviously this isn't something reasonable people can disagree on. (Sarcasm.) – alphabet Feb 27 '23 at 16:28

3 Answers3

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In “Dative Shifts and Prime Rib Dinners,” linguist Neal Whitman examines the oral specimen The townspeople wanted to donate us a prime rib dinner and says:

. . . it is usually noted that Latinate verbs such as donate do not undergo dative shift. Here are some sample sentences from a few papers I found by Googling “donate” and “dative shift”.

[selected examples]
I donated money to the Red Cross.
*I donated the Red Cross money.
I donated money to charity.
*I donated charity money.

He then goes on to provide shifted examples from Google Books:

[selected examples]
Next month someone may donate us an office.
If you want to donate us something for dog food, . . .
I’m so grateful you’d think she’s just donated me one of her kidneys.

He concludes:

I’m not saying that analyses of dative shift no longer need to exclude certain verbs from participating in this alternation. However, the canonical exclusion, donate, isn’t such a good example, after all.

Source: Literal-Minded — Dative Shifts and Prime Rib Dinners

I won’t be doing this until further notice, though.

Tinfoil Hat
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  • Marking this as solved because it explains why the examples sound OK to me, even though (as everyone has pointed out) this is very nonstandard. – alphabet Feb 26 '23 at 15:57
  • This isn't the only case where my intuition disagrees with CGEL, incidentally: "I returned him his keys" and "I delivered him the package" also sound OK to me. Huh. – alphabet Feb 26 '23 at 16:30
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    More from you-know-who here: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/90530/whats-wrong-with-ill-open-you-the-door – Tinfoil Hat Feb 26 '23 at 18:00
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    @alphabet: We may be of like mind! If so, perhaps you could upvote me an answer if you haven't already done so! – FumbleFingers Feb 26 '23 at 18:51
  • @FumbleFingers Agreed. I suspect the answer is that, in informal speech, dative shift can spread to semantically similar words; so it could be used with "donate" by analogy with "give." Hmm... – alphabet Feb 26 '23 at 19:15
  • That said, "open me the door" actually does sound wrong to me; I think you're right about the AmE/BrE split on the benefactive. – alphabet Feb 26 '23 at 19:26
  • @alphabet: Personally, I have no problem at all with Open me the door. (But I can only tolerate Open me the door for Aunt Ethel** on a good day! :) – FumbleFingers Feb 26 '23 at 19:53
  • It is interesting to note that the ones that "sound wrong" -> I donated the Red Cross money*. I donated charity money. are noun - noun combinations and the ones that might pass muster if you squint -> Next month someone may donate us an office. If you want to donate us something for dog food* use object case pronoun - noun. -- The there is I donated it them / them it. – Greybeard Feb 27 '23 at 00:51
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    Open me a beer, will you? – Tinfoil Hat Feb 27 '23 at 00:55
  • The invalidity of "I donated charity money" isn't really relevant. After all, "give" is ditransitive, and you can say "I gave money to charity," but not "I gave charity money." – alphabet Feb 27 '23 at 02:19
  • Did Whitman notice that all the acceptable uses from googlebooks use a personal pronoun, not a regular NP? – Araucaria - Him May 13 '23 at 16:25
  • @Araucaria-Nothereanymore. — Are you saying that, for example, She donated me one of her kidneys is acceptable but She donated her cousin one of her kidneys is not? That Someone may donate us an office is acceptable but Someone may donate the company an office is not? – Tinfoil Hat May 13 '23 at 22:22
  • More acceptable, yes. – Araucaria - Him May 13 '23 at 23:16
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The Britannica Dictionary explains the usage of donate:

: to give (money, food, clothes, etc.) in order to help a person or organization

[+ object]

The computers were donated by local companies. We donated our old clothes to charity. people who donate money to political candidates He donates some of his free time to volunteer work.

[no object]

Everyone is encouraged to donate.

Probably your examples are regional or informal usage.

user 66974
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It's not something I would say as a fellow native speaker in the northeast US, and I didn't find any examples in in COCA in the top 3 "recipient" collocates (charity, campaign, and organization). Excluding false positives, every example I found used "to". You can replicate this yourself by searching for DONATE near NOUN.

I found this grammar discussed in On Shell Structures.

Laurel
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