Abstract

In Thai grammatical and semantic relations are expressed by syntactic or lexical means, such as constituent order and grammaticalized nouns and verbs. The topic of the present study are benefactive strategies in Thai, i.e. linguistic means to describe situations which involve an entity peripheral to, but in some way affected by, the event described by the predicate. Different benefactive strategies are compared in terms of form and function with special emphasis on the semantic differences. The Thai data show an important distinction between ‘direct benefactive’ (the beneficiary is directly involved in the event as recipient or experiencer), and ‘indirect benefactive’ (the activity is performed for his sake without him necessarily being aware of it) expressions.