Re: What is a dative phrase?

On Wed, 13 Jun 2007, Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
Matthew Huntbach <mmh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
On Wed, 13 Jun 2007, Robert Lieblich wrote:

English has no dative case. There may be phrases in English
analogous to dative phrases, but there are no dative phrases in
English.

If you google <"german grammar" "dative phrases">. you'll find some
useful explanations, in English, of what a dative phrase is in
German.

In

"I threw Tom the ball"

"I sent Tom the letter"

etc, I'd say "Tom" is a dative phrase. "Tom" can be the subject or
object (and replace "Tom" by "my brother, Tom" or any other noun
phrase to show it isn't just a word), without being inflected to
show it, so why not dative?

Because there are noun phrases that do inflect for case: pronouns. So
postulating a dative case here requires you to further say that the
dative case in English is always identical to the accusative. Which
is pretty close to just saying that English has no dative case and the
indirect object is accusative.

Unless your theory has some reason to assume that the relationship has
to be considered dative. ("Just because other languages mark it that
way" isn't really a good reason.) If we had a different pronoun case
here, I'd be happy to call it dative, but as it is, I'd just say that
the dative case has been subsumed by the accusative.

As already noted, the question was about "dative phrase" rather than
"dative case". In the sentences I have quoted it is clear we distinguish
which is the noun that in other langauges would be dative case and which is the noun which in other languges would be accustaive case by position.
If dative and accusative had fully merged, we would not know in
the first setence whether I had picked up Tom and threw him at the ball
or whether I had picked up teh ball and threw it at Tom. Or, rather

"I threw the ball Tom"

would be equally valid and mean the same if the arguement is always that
context distinguishes.

Matthew Huntbach

Matthew Huntbach
.

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