Dative alternative has always been a focus of linguistic study. Previous studies mainly focused on either the transformation or the semantic differences between the alternating structures. Not many researchers have observed the patterns of structural choice in historic data with the purpose to find general patterns of verbs of giving in the dative alternation in Chinese. Based on a corpus study of two classical, historic annuals, Zuo Zhuan and Shi Ji, we first find out the general structural patterns of the verbs of giving and then examine the distinctive patterns of choice. Our data show that the major verbs of giving under study belong to two types, caused-possession and caused-motion. And they are found to have distinct structural biases towards V-IO-DO and the prepositional object structure respectively. We also find that factors of lexical semantics of the verbs and the discourse coherence heavily influence the structural choice of the verbs to different degrees.