Languages & Linguistics
Dative
In linguistics, the dative case is a grammatical case used to indicate the indirect object of a verb, typically showing the recipient of an action or the person for whom something is done. It is found in many languages, including Latin, German, and Russian. In English, the dative case is not explicitly marked, but indirect objects are often indicated through word order or prepositions.
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eBook - ePub- C.T. Onions(Author)
- 2022(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
A few instances of the genitive and Dative as direct object remained in early ME.; but two influences were at work which tended to make these disappear rapidly: (i) the lmge majority of verbs took the accusative as object, and thus there was a tendency for the accusative to become the universal object-case (just as - es, -s, weakened from OE. - as, has become, except in a few isolated words, the universal plural ending); (ii) the case endings were rapidly becoming ‘levelled’; so that (for example) the Dative in ME. soon became indistingulshable from the accusative. The history of the accusative as an adverbial adjunct is similar. Relations of time, space, measure, or manner were expressed in OE, by the accusative, genitive, Dative, or (occasionally) instrumental; but by far the majority were in the accusative. By the process of ‘levelling’ the distinction between accusative and Dative became obliterated; moreover, the accusative largely extended its scope by simply supplanting the other cases. The genitive remained in a few idioms which are mentioned in §110. The use of the accusative in dependence on prepositions presents the same kind of historical development. In OE. all the oblique cases were employed with prepositions, some of which, as in Latin and modern German, took different cases according to the meaning to be expressed. Ultimately, by the ‘levelling’ process the case after prepositions became the same as the object-case, i.e. the accusative. In pronouns the form of the ob.ject-case is historically that of the Dative. 105 Adverbial groups expressing the accusative of time, space, measure, or manner, containing a noun The simple adverbial accusative may often be replaced by an equivalent with a preposition, e.g. ‘They stayed there some time’ or ‘for some time’, and the origin of several established phrases can be shown to be in prepositional groups
eBook - ePubThe Fundamentally Simple Logic of Language
Learning a Second Language with the Tools of the Native Speaker
- Luis H. González(Author)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
Cross-linguistic variation in object marking . Utrecht: LOT. (Doctoral dissertation.) Retrieved from (https://www.lotpublications.nl/Documents/168_fulltext.pdf ) (Last accessed 2020).- Draye, Luk. 1996. The German Dative. In Van Belle, William & Van Langendonck, Willy (eds.), The Dative. Vol 1: Descriptive studies , 155–216. (Case and grammatical relations across languages). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
- Fernández Ramírez, Salvador. 1987. Gramática española . El pronombre . 2d ed. Vol. Prepared by José Polo. Madrid: Arco/libros, S.A.
- Fillmore, Charles J. 1968. The case for case. In Bach, Emmon & Harms, Robert T. (eds.), Universals of linguistic theory , 1–88. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022226700002875 .
- Gil, David. 1982. Case marking, phonological size, and linear order. In Hopper, Paul & Thompson, Sandra A. (eds.), Studies in transitivity . Syntax and semantics , vol. 15, 117–141. New York: Academic Press.
- Givón, Talmy. 1979. On understanding grammar . New York: Academic Press.
- González, Luis H. 1997. Transitivity and structural case marking in psych verbs. An HPSG fragment of a grammar of Spanish . Davis: University of California. (Doctoral dissertation.)
- Hopper, Paul & Thompson, Sandra A. 1980. Transitivity in grammar and discourse. Language 56. 251–295. (https://www.jstor.org/stable/413757 ).
- Huddleston, Rodney & Pullum, Geoffrey K. 2002. The Cambridge grammar of the English language . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Jespersen, Otto. 1905. Growth and structure of the English language . Leipzig: B. G. Teubner.
- Lapesa, Rafael. 1983. Historia de la lengua española . 9th ed. Madrid: Espasa.
- Øvrelid, Lydia. 2004. Disambiguation of grammatical functions in Norwegian: Modeling variation in word order interpretations conditioned by animacy and definiteness. In Karlsson, Fred (ed.), Proceedings of the 20th Scandinavian Conference of Linguistics. Helsinki, Finland: Department of General Linguistics, University of Helsinki.
eBook - ePub- Iwona Sadowska(Author)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
ę . ‘I gave a book to him.’ (See 5.2.9)The Dative case is used with many verbs with meanings related to “giving,” “conveying,” “transferring” or the lack thereof. An item given is often in the accusative case and the addressee/receiver is in the Dative case.The Dative case is used with several verbs with meanings related to “looking,” “listening closely.”dać ‘to give’pokazać ‘to show’darować ‘to give’przebaczyć ‘to forgive’dorę czyć ‘to deliver’przekazać ‘to hand over’dzię kować ‘to thank’przydać się ‘to be useful’dziwić się ‘to be surprised at somebody’przynosić ‘to bring’sprezentować ‘to present’odmawiać ‘to refuse’szkodzić ‘to harm’ofiarować ‘to donate’towarzyszyć ‘to accompany’podać ‘to pass’zawdzię czać ‘to owe’podobać się ‘to be attracted to’zazdrościć ‘to envy’pomagać ‘to help’The Dative case is used with several verbs with meanings related to “power and control.”przyglądać się ‘to observe’przedstawić ‘to introduce’przypatrywać się ‘to look carefully’zwierzyć się ‘to confide’przysłuchiwać się ‘to listen’The Dative case is used with verbs with meanings related to “believing and trusting.”dokuczać ‘to tease’ulegać ‘to give in’podporządkować się ‘to yield’zabraniać ‘to prohibit’pozwolić ‘to allow’zakazać ‘to forbid’przeszkadzać ‘to interrupt’zapobiegać ‘to prevent’sprzeciwiać się ‘to oppose’The Dative case is used with verbs with meanings related to “passing information” to a listener.ufać ‘to trust’zaprzeczać ‘to deny’wierzyć ‘to believe’mówić ‘to tell’powiedzieć ‘to say’opowiedzieć ‘to tell’Praktyczny słownik łączliwości składniowej czasowników polskich. (A practical dictionary of Polish verbal collocations) by Stanisław Mę dak offers an exhaustive list of verbs that can take certain cases.5
eBook - ePubGrammatical Relations
The Evidence Against Their Necessity and Universality
- D. N. S. Bhat(Author)
- 2002(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
(8) given above, and also in the following sentences:See TableSimilarly, in a question-answer situation, if a Dative noun phrase functions as the answering argument (see 3.5.2 ), it must be shifted obligatorily to the preverbal position, as can be seen from the following sentences:See TableThe unacceptability of (24c) as an answer to (24a) is due to the fact that the answering argument has not been placed in the preverbal (focus) position.It is evident that the positioning of an argument in the sentence cannot be used as evidence for claiming subjecthood for any given type of argument in Kannada.A1.5 CAUSATIVE FORMATION
Lastly, I wish to point out that the process of causativization differentiates between the above-mentioned Dative noun phrases and the nominative noun phrases (both volitional and non-volitional) and the occurrence of this differentiation also helps us to disconfirm the main contention of Sridhar (1979). When a sentence is causativized, the Dative noun phrase undergoes no change in its case marking, whereas the nominative one changes into an accusative one (if there is no accusative noun phrase in the sentence) or into a postpositional one (see pp. ).There are actually two distinct types of ‘Dative-subject’ predicates in Kannada: (a) predicates which can take either a Dative argument or a nominative argument, depending upon whether the referent of that argument is participating in the concerned event (or assuming the concerned characteristic) volitionally or not; and (b) predicates which can only take a Dative argument. In the latter case, however, the participation of the referent can only be non-volitional.The effect of causativization is two-fold in the case of ‘Dative-subject’ predicates of the first type. If the predicate has a Dative argument, the argument would be left unchanged, whereas if it has a nominative argument, it would be changed into an accusative one. Examples:
eBook - ePub- Diane C. Nelson(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
Chapter 2 Grammatical Case Assignment in Finnish 2.1 IntroductionPatterns of objective case in Finnish, or, more precisely, case marking on internal arguments and quasi-arguments, are problematic for Case Theory for a number of reasons and so have attracted scrutiny in the previous literature on Finnish. In simple transitives, subjects appear in nominative case and objects in accusative (identical in form to singular genitive case in full DPs) or partitive case. However, despite predictions made by Case Theory and Burzio’s Generalization, full DP ‘nominative objects’ (here referred to as ‘zero accusatives’) surface in certain well-defined syntactic contexts, but alternate with accusative-marked animate pronouns in the same environments. Moreover, the distribution of both of these accusative forms alternates freely with partitive case. A separate form for plurals also exists, which is identical for nominative and accusative cases.Data is presented first illustrating nominative and objective case marking in transitive sentences. Next, the partitive/accusative alternation is examined. Finally, data illustrating the theoretically problematic zero-accusative case form is discussed, followed by a review of the previous literature on the topic.2.2 Subject and Object CaseCanonical subjects appear in nominative, morphologically unmarked, case and agree with the verb. Plural nominative case is signalled by a suffix, -t:1Nominative pronouns occur within the following paradigm:Objective case in simple transitive sentences may be marked with one of three suffix forms, accusative -n and -t, and partitive -TA. The distribution of the -n
eBook - ePub- Martin Durrell, Katrin Kohl, Claudia Kaiser, Gudrun Loftus(Authors)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
noun phrase , and it is never introduced by a preposition. Verbs with this sentence pattern are the commonest equivalent for English verbs that indicate an action being done to, or affecting, something or someone:Sie küsst ihn.She is kissing him.Ich baue ein Haus.I am building a house.C, D: Subject + verb + Dative object
There are two kinds of verbs with an object in the Dative case (see 1.4 and 8.3 ):- ▶ Some verbs have only a Dative object (sentence pattern C ), e.g. helfen and dienen .
- ▶ Other verbs have both a Dative object (a so-called INDIRECT OBJECT ) and an accusative object (DIRECT OBJECT , sentence pattern D ). These are often similar to English:
The Dative object can be a pronoun or a noun phrase . It is never introduced by a preposition .Er gab dem Hund einen Knochen.He gave the dog a bone. / He gave a bone to the dog.Der Beamte brachte ihm den Brief.The official brought him the letter.E, F, G: Subject + verb + prepositional object
Like English (e.g. ‘think of …’, ‘ask for …’), German has many verbs that are used with a specific PREPOSITION , as a set phrase (e.g. denken an …, bitten um … ). The case of the following noun depends on the preposition. Some verbs with a prepositional object have an accusative or Dative object with them as well (see 1.5 and 8.6 ).H: Subject + verb + predicate complement
A very few important verbs – notably sein and werden – have a predicate complement consisting of a NOUN PHRASE or an ADJECTIVE . If the predicate complement is a noun phrase, this is in the NOMINATIVE case, i.e. in the same case as the subject . These are called COPULAR (‘linking’) verbs (see 1.6 and 8.7
