The dative case (abbreviated dat, or sometimes d when it is a core argument) is a grammatical case generally used to indicate the noun to whom something is given. For example, in "John gave Mary a book".
The name is derived from the Latin casus dativus, meaning "the case appropriate to giving"; this was in turn modelled on the Greek ἡ δοτικὴ πτῶσις, from its use with the verb διδόναι (didónai) — "to give".
The thing being given may be a tangible object, such as "a book" or "a pen", or it may be an intangible abstraction, such as "an answer" or "help". The dative generally marks the indirect object of a verb, although in some instances the dative is used for the direct object of a verb pertaining directly to an act of giving something. In Russian, for example, the verb 'to call' [by telephone] is always followed by a noun in the dative.
In some languages the dative case has assimilated the functions of other now-extinct cases. In Scottish Gaelic and Irish, the term dative case is misleadingly used in traditional grammars to refer to the prepositional case-marking of nouns following simple prepositions and the definite article. In Georgian, the dative case also marks the subject of the sentence in some verbs and some tenses. This is also called the dative construction.
The dative was common among early Indo-European languages and has survived to the present in the Balto-Slavic branch and the Germanic branch, among others. It also exists in similar forms in several non–Indo-European languages, such as the Finno-Ugric family of languages and Japanese.
Under the influence of English, which uses the preposition "to" for both indirect objects (give to) and directions of movement (go to), the term "dative" has sometimes been used to describe cases that in other languages would more appropriately be called lative.
The Old English language, current until approximately some time after the time of the Norman Conquest in 1066, had a dative case; however, the English case system gradually fell into disuse during the Middle English period, when the accusative and dative pronouns merged into a single objective pronoun used in both roles. This merging of accusative and dative functionality in Middle and Modern English has led most modern grammarians to discard the "accusative" and "dative" labels in English as obsolete, in favor of the term "objective".
While the dative case is no longer a part of modern English usage, it survives in a few set expressions. One good example is the word "methinks", with the meaning "it seems to me". It survives in this fixed form from the days of Old English (having undergone, however, phonetic changes with the rest of the language), in which it was constructed as "[it]" + "me" (the dative case of the personal pronoun) + "thinks" (i.e. "seems", < Old English thyncan -"to seem", a verb closely related to the verb thencan -"to think", but distinct from it in Old English; later it merged with "think" and lost this meaning).
The pronoun whom is also a remnant of the dative case in English, descending from the Old English dative pronoun "hwām" (as opposed to the nominative "who", which descends from Old English "hwā") — though "whom" also absorbed the functions of the Old English accusative pronoun "hwone". Likewise, "him" is a remnant of both the Old English dative "him" and accusative "hine", "her" serves for both Old English dative "hire" and accusative "hīe", etc.
In current English usage, the indirect object of an action is sometimes expressed with a prepositional phrase of "to" or "for", though an objective pronoun can also be placed directly after the main verb and used in a dative manner, provided that the verb has a direct object as well; for example, "He gave that to me" can also be phrased as "He gave me that", and "He built a snowman for me" can also be rendered as "He built [for] me a snowman". In both examples, the generic objective pronoun "me" functions as a dative pronoun in the same way that it does in languages which still retain distinct accusative and dative cases.
The dative is generally used to mark the indirect object of a German sentence. Certain German prepositions require the dative: aus, außer, bei, mit, nach, seit, von, zu and gegenüber (a sequence that may be remembered by singing them to the main tune of The Blue Danube as a mnemonic device). Other prepositions (an, auf, hinter, in, neben, über, unter, vor, and zwischen) may be used with dative (indicating current location), or accusative (indicating direction towards something). Das Buch steht auf dem Tisch (dative: the book is standing on the table), but Ich stelle das Buch auf den Tisch (accusative: I set the book on the table).
Note that the concept of an indirect object may be rendered by a prepositional phrase. In this case, the noun or pronoun's case is determined by the preposition, NOT by its function in the sentence. Consider this sentence:
Here, the subject, Ich, is in the nominative case, the direct object, das Buch, is in the accusative case, and zum Verleger is in the dative case, since zu always requires the dative (zum is a contraction of zu + dem). However:
In this sentence, Freund would seem to be the indirect object, but because it follows an (direction), the accusative is required, not the dative.
All of the articles change in the dative case.
Masculine | Feminine | Neuter | Plural | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Definite article | dem | der | dem | den (plus an "n" at the end of most substantives) |
Indefinite article (and other "ein-words") | einem | einer | einem | keinen (plus an "n" at the end of most substantives) |
Some German verbs require the dative for their direct objects. Common examples include folgen, helfen and antworten. In each case, the direct object of the verb is rendered in dative. For example:
The dative case is also used with reflexive (sich) verbs when specifying what part of the self the verb is being done to:
Adjective endings also change in the dative case. There is also another factor that determines the endings of adjectives and that is whether the adjective is being used after a definite article (the), after an indefinite article (a/an) or without any article before the adjective (many green apples).
Masculine | Feminine | Neuter | Plural | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Definite article | -en | -en | -en | -en |
Indefinite Article | -en | -en | -en | -en |
No article | -em | -er | -em | -en |
Except the main case (Dativus), there are several other kinds:
In addition to its main function as the Dativus, the dative case has different other functions in Classical Greek[1]:
Unusual in other Indo-European branches but common among Slavic languages, the choice of ending depends on whether the word is a noun or an adjective. Other factors are gender and number. In some cases, the ending may not be obvious, even when those three factors are considered, ie. in Polish, syn ("son") and ojciec ("father") are both masculine singular nouns but syn → synowi and ojciec → ojcu.
In Russian, the dative case is used to indicate the indirect object of an action (that to which something is given, thrown, read, etc). In the instance where a person is the goal of motion, dative is used instead of accusative to indicate motion toward. This is usually achieved with the pronoun κ+destination in dative case; К врачу, meaning 'to the doctor'.
Dative is also the necessary case taken by certain prepositions when expressing certain ideas. For instance, when the preposition по is used to mean "along", its object is always in dative case as with, По бокам, 'along the sides'.
Other Slavic languages apply the dative case (and the other cases) more or less the same way as does Russian, some languages may use the dative in other ways. The following examples are from Polish:
The dative case in Armenian (տրական) is signified with a -ի (-i) ending (some Western Armenian dialects will use -ին (-in) suffix for the dative.)
The most common use of the Dative in Armenian is to indicate the indirect object of an action.
In addition to showing the indirect object of an action, it also shows movement toward a place or direction.
The term "dative" is grammatically similar to the sanskrit word "datta". "Datta" means "gift" or "the act of giving". The dative case is the fourth in the usual procedure in the declension of nouns (chaturthi-vibhakti).
As with many other languages, the dative case is used in Hungarian to show the indirect object of a verb. For example, Dánielnek adtam ezt a könyvet (I gave this book to Dániel).
It has two suffixes, -nak and -nek; the correct is selected by vowel harmony. The personal dative pronouns follow the -nek version: nekem, neked, etc.
This case is also used to express "for" in certain circumstances, such as "I bought a gift for Mother".
In possessive constructions the nak/nek endings are also used but this is NOT the dative form (rather, the attributive or possessive case)[2]
In the Northeast Caucasian languages, such as Tsez, the dative also takes the functions of the lative case in marking the direction of an action. By some linguists, they are still regarded as two separate cases in those languages, although the suffixes are the exact same for both cases. Other linguists list them separately only for the purpose of separating syntactic cases from locative cases. An example with the ditransitive verb "show" (literally: "make see") is given below:
Кидбā ужихъор кIетIу биквархо. | |||
kidb-ā | uži-qo-r | kʼetʼu | b-ikʷa-r-xo |
girl:OBL-ERG | boy-POSS-DAT/LAT | cat:[III]:ABS | III-see-CAUS-PRES |
"The girl shows the cat to the boy." |
The dative/lative is also used to indicate possession, as in the example below, because there is no such verb as "to have".
Кидбехъор кIетIу зовси. | |||
kidbe-qo-r | kʼetʼu | zow-si | |
girl:OBL-POSS-DAT/LAT | cat:ABS | be:PST-PST | |
"The girl had a cat." |
As in the examples above, the dative/lative case usually occurs in combination with another suffix as poss-lative case; this should not be regarded as a separate case, though, as many of the locative cases in Tsez are constructed analytically; hence, they are actually a combination of two case suffixes. See Tsez language#Locative case suffixes for further details.
Verbs of perception or emotion (like "see", "know", "love", "want") also require the logical subject to stand in the dative/lative case, note that in this example the "pure" dative/lative without its POSS-suffix is used.
ГIалир ПатIи йетих. | |||
ˁAli-r | Patʼi | y-eti-x | |
Ali-DAT/LAT | Fatima:[II]:ABS | II-love-PRES | |
"Ali loves Fatima." |
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