Dative case
Dative is a grammatical case for a noun. Dative marks, generally, the indirect object of a verb; other uses include possession, as in Vulgar Latin and, to a lesser extent, Classical Latin.
Dative cases are found in Ancient Greek (and occasionally in Modern Greek), Old English, and German, among other languages. Compare nominative case, accusative case, ergative case, genitive case, vocative case, ablative case.
While the dative case is no longer a part of the English grammar, 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, phonetical changes with the rest of the language), in which it was constructed as me (the dative case of the personal pronoun) + thinks ("to seem", a verb closely related to the verb "to think", but distinct from it in Old English; later it merged with "to think" and lost this meaning).
Though, in English, the indirect object of an action is sometimes expressed with a prepositional phrase of 'to' or 'for', an accusative can 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 me that" or "He built me a snowman". In both examples the accusative "me" functions as a dative.
Referenced By
Declension | Dutch grammar | Eastern Armenian | English grammar | Grammatical case | HungarianLanguage | Hungarian Language | Magyar (language) | Noun case | Sanskrit | Sanskrit language | Sanskrit transliteration | Serbo-Croat | Serbo-Croatian | Serbo-Croatian language | Serbocroatian language | Slovene language | Slovenian (language) | Slovenian language | Vedic Sanskrit | Western Armenian
|
