Word.ws English Dictionary

Baker's paradox

Baker's paradox proper noun: 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.

Proper noun

Baker's paradox

  1. 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.

Origin of Baker's paradox

Named after the linguist C. L. Baker.

Questions about Baker's paradox

What does Baker's paradox mean?
Baker's paradox means 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.
What part of speech is Baker's paradox?
Baker's paradox is a proper noun.

Words near Baker's paradox in the dictionary

  1. baker's dozens
  2. Baker's Game
  3. baker's half dozen
  4. Baker's Island
  5. baker's itch
  6. Baker's paradox
  7. baker's percentage
  8. baker's percentages
  9. baker's salt
  10. Baker's small-toothed harvest mice
  11. Baker's small-toothed harvest mouse

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Baker's paradox (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “Baker's paradox.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/baker%27s_paradox. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.