Dative construction
The dative construction is a grammatical way of constructing a sentence using the dative case. A sentence is also said to be in dative construction if the subject and the object can switch their places for a given verb, without altering the verb's structure. 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.
Examples
Persian
There has not been extensive research on dative construction in Persian, but they can be easily found in Persian:German
In German, the dative construction sometimes occurs with the verb sein. Compare:The first example implies that the speaker has a cold personality. The subject here is in the nominative case. The second construction is used when one wants to say "I am 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 the implied dummy pronoun es, and mir is the indirect object. The use of the nominative form equivalent to "I" is only possible with a different meaning: "Ich bin kalt"='I am cold '. "Mir" behaves like a subject and can control infinitives:
Icelandic
Dative constructions are extremely common in Icelandic. Their use is similar to that of German, although perhaps somewhat more widespread. The following example is exactly the same as the German one given above:The implication of the first example is the same as in German, that the speaker has a cold personality rather than feeling physically cold. Dative constructions appear in many fixed expressions such as this, such as mér er alveg sama, henni er annt um umhverfið and þú getur fengið nýjan síma þér að kostnaðarlausu.
Passive constructions in Icelandic also require the subject to be in the dative if the verb in question governs the dative, e.g., tímaáætluninni var breytt, skjölunum var eytt and framkvæmdum var frestað um tvær vikur. Compare to passive constructions where the verb governs the accusative: búðin var opnuð á föstudaginn and bréfið var sent fyrir hádegi. Verbs that govern the genitive behave in the same way as verbs governing the dative, e.g. þín verður saknað.
Finally, certain verbs require the subject to be in the dative. This is particularly common with verbs of emotion or opinion. For example:
This phenomenon is not only restricted to the dative case, some verbs require their subject to be in the accusative:
In all of the above instances, the verbs used in these constructions are in the third-person singular form.
Hindustani
Dative constructions are common in Hindustani. It always makes use of a pronoun or noun in the dative case which acts as the subject and the copula verb 'होना' /ɦonɑ/ in the 3rd person conjugations. Dative construction in Hindi has no restrictions on type of verb that can be used with it. Hence any verb in any grammatical aspect, mood, or tense of Hindi can be used in the dative construction. The following are some examples showing dative construction:Passive forms construction in Hindi can make use of both the nominative and the dative case as subjects without any change of meaning. When the subject is nominative the nuance is such that the focus is only on the receiver being on the receiving end of the action, and when dative pronoun is used the nuance is such that the focus is on the doer that did the action to the receiver. It is the nuance that decides which grammatical case noun/pronoun to use, the meaning/translation of both are the same. However, the verb agreement pattern in both constructions are different. When the dative case is used, the verb shows agreement in gender and number with the direct object, but when the subject is in the nominative case, the verb shows agreement with the nominative subject of the sentence, also, the copula agrees with the nominative subject in its conjugation and it cannot be restricted to the third person. An example showing the equivalency of the usage of dative and nominative pronouns in the passive construction is below:
Notes:
- गया & गयी are the singular masculine and feminine forms of the perfective participle of the light-verb जाना which is used for passive voice construction.
- मारा is the perfective participle of the verb मारना .
Spanish
Other verbs which show this pattern are apasionar, antojarse, encantar, faltar, quedar and sobrar.
Serbo-Croatian
In Serbo-Croatian, the dative construction is often used, mostly in the same manner as in German:Some verbs, like nedostajati use dative constructions:
Georgian dative construction
The dative construction is very common in Georgian. The dative construction of Georgian differs somewhat from German, in that the dative case agrees with a certain person marking on the verb. The dative construction occurs in the perfect 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" by some generativists. Compare:In Georgian, the -s suffix is the dative case marker. In the first sentence, bavshvebi is the subject and in the nominative case. Tsqals is the object and in the dative case. In the second sentence, however, the subject is in the dative case, and the object is in the nominative case. The verb in the imperfective and perfective sentences are conjugated in accordance with the subject of the sentence ; they are both third person plural. Perfect verbs also agree in part with their dative case subjects, but only have third person verb endings. Therefore, "I have drunk water" would be:
The dative construction is also a separate class of verbs which have the semantics of experience, cognitive processes, and possession. An example of this can be given with the possessive verb kona :
In all the tenses, the subject kals is in the dative case, and the object tsigni is in the nominative case. Etymologically, the root is also found in the future forms of the copula 'be', making it very much like the Latin dative possession construction 'mihi est X'. Again, all singular persons have an agreeing proclitic pronoun on the verb, but a third person singular verb ending.
Finnish
The genitive case is used in dative constructions. The "dative genitive" is no longer productive in Finnish language, and it is often replaced with other cases, except in frozen expressions, e.g. luojan kiitos.The dative genitive is often used with verb infinitives.