Dative

In Linguistic, the case dative is the Cas of the indirect object or second, i.e. the Actant known as profit (not to confuse however with the case Bénéfactif). It is called dative because it indicates that to which one gives (Latin: C , das , dare , dedi , datum , “to give”).

General presentation

One names also ethical Datif a syntactic construction utilizing a dative which is not grammatically indirect object.

If one places oneself from a traditional grammatical point of view, there exists a case dative in French, though very limited. For example, when one says I gave him the book , him functions as a dative, because this word is indirect object. Therefore, one can say that it and it are personal, him (→ “with him, with it”) dative. In the current grammar of French, these terms resulting from the Latin grammatical tradition are however generally avoided.

In German and old Greek, the dative also expresses a locative (in opposition to the accusative marking the allatif one) but also the complement of indirect object. Modern German and especially that spoken in the south tends to replace the génifif one by the dative in many cases (example wegen dem instead of wegen of the ). In addition of many sentences start with a Russian and German dative (example: to mir STI die Vase kaputt gegangen).

In a great number of languages, one can make use of the dative or a preposition to mark the possession (equivalent of the French verb “to have”). For example, in Latin, one will say “mihi more readily is liber” me is book than “habeo librum” delivers to say “I have a book”. In the same way, in Tibetan, one will say: nga the dpe-cha yod “I have a book” (litt. : “with me is a book”) where the is the mark of the dative. In familiar/dialectal German one will be able to insist by adding the possessive pronoun with the dative: be STI ihm center Buch (it is its book with him).

Zh-classical: 與格