本文旨在考辨古漢語授與動詞「與」表示使役、被動的產生時間及其演變機制。文中指出所謂先秦「與」表使役或被動的例子，其可靠性都令人懷疑。使役句的出現當不早於六朝，而被動句出現於唐代。前人多以「授與動詞＞使役動詞＞表示被動」的演化路徑說明其句法發展，觀察「與」字式的句法特徵，並參酌其他語言的相關用法，本文歸結授與動詞無論表使役或被動都是在雙賓語結構上所衍生的語義。「與」字式作為漢語的被動表述法之一具有類型學的意義，跟表蒙受的「被」字式，及使役兼表被動的「教」字式、「讓」字式明顯有別。

This paper discusses at what point in history and by what mechanism the Chinese dative verb yu (與) came to be used to express causative and passive meanings. We will suggest that these two usages began no earlier than the Six Dynasties period and became more prevalent during the Tang and Five Dynasties periods. Linguists have for the most part explained the evolution of this verb as a progression from a dative usage to a causative verb and finally to a passive meaning. However, by looking at similar usages in other languages and at the syntactic characteristic of the verb yu, we show that the use of this dative verb to express causative and passive meanings developed out of a double object construction. The fact that yu could be used to indicate a passive construction in Chinese has typological significance insofar as it is clearly distinct from constructions which use particles such as bei (被), jiao (教) and rang (讓).