Baker's paradox

English edit

Named after the linguist C. L. Baker.

(linguistics) The apparent paradox that children learning English encounter many sentences amenable to dative shift (e.g. "give the book to me" → "give me the book") but apparently have no way to learn that this is not possible with certain verbs (e.g. "*donate me the book" is unacceptable), and yet rarely make this kind of error.