Dative construction
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The dative construction is a grammatical way of constructing a sentence, with the subject in the dative case and the direct object in the nominative case. A sentence is also said to be in dative construction if the subject and the object (direct or indirect) can switch their cases for a given verb, without altering the verb's structure (subject becoming the new object, and the object becoming the new subject). The latter case is not to be confused with the passive voice, where only the direct object of a sentence becomes the subject of the passive-voiced sentence, and the verb's structure also changes to convey the meaning of the passive voice. The dative construction tends to occur when the verb indicates a state rather than an action.
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[edit] Examples
[edit] German
In German, the dative construction sometimes occurs with the verb sein ("to be"). Compare:
- Ich bin kalt ("I am cold")
- Mir ist kalt (literally means, "cold is to me.")
The first example implies that the speaker has a cold personality. The subject here (ich, "I") is in the nominative case. The second construction is used when one wants to say "I am (feeling) cold" in German. While in English the subject of the sentence "I am cold" is "I", in German the subject of the sentence "Mir ist kalt" is kalt ("cold"). The indirect object here is mir, the dative case of the pronoun ich in German.
[edit] Spanish
A number of verbs in Spanish employ a dative construction. Many of these verbs express psychological states; the most common one is gustar, which is equivalent to English like (but syntactically functions like be pleasant to). The verb agrees with the syntactic subject, but the subject is usually placed after the verb instead of before, as usual. The dative construction requires a proclitic pronoun; if the dative argument is a full noun phrase or needs to be explicitly stated, it is shown by a phrase with the preposition a.
- Me gusta el verano. ("I like the summer")
- A mí me gusta más la primavera. ("[As for me,] I like the spring better")
- A Juan le gustan las rubias. ("Juan likes blondes")
- A ella le gustas. ("She likes you")
Other verbs which show this pattern are apasionar ("be passionate about"), antojarse ("have a feeling for"), encantar ("adore"), faltar ("be lacking"), quedar and sobrar ("be left").
[edit] Croatian
In Croatian (as in other Slavic languages), the dative construction is often used, mostly in the same manner as in German:
- Hladan sam.
- Cold-ADJ-MASC-NOM-SG be-1stPERS-SG
- literally "I am cold", meaning "I am a cold person".
- Hladno mi je.
- Cold-ADV me-DAT-SG be-3rdPERS-SG
- literally "It is cold to me", meaning "I am (feeling) cold".
Some verbs, like nedostajati ("lack") use dative constructions:
- Zubi mu nedostaju.
- Teeth-NOM-PL him-DAT-SG lack-3rdPERS-PL
- literally "Teeth lack to him".
[edit] Georgian dative construction
The dative construction is very common in Georgian. The dative construction of Georgian is different from that of German in that the subject is actually in the dative case. The dative construction occurs in the perfective tense of transitive verbs and in all the tenses of some verbs, such as "to want", "to have", "to forget" and "to remember." These verbs are also called "indirect verbs." Compare:
- Bavshvebi tsqals svamen ("children are drinking water")
- Bavshvebs tsqali dauleviat ("children have drunk water")
In Georgian, the -s suffix is the dative case marker. In the first sentence, bavshvebi ("children") is the subject and in the nominative case. Tsqals ("water") is the object and in the dative case (with the suffix -s attached). In the second sentence, however, the subject (children) is in the dative case (with -s), and the object (water) is in the nominative case. The verb in both sentences are conjugated in accordance with the subject of the sentence (regardless of the case of the subject); they are both third person plural.
Another example can be given with the verb kona ("to have"):
- Kals tsigni akvs ("The woman has a book")
- Kals tsigni hkonda ("The woman had a book")
- Kals tsigni hkonia ("The woman has had a book")
In all the tenses, the subject kals ("woman") is in the dative case, and the object tsigni ("book") is in the nominative case.
