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.