Re: Ethical dative

Tristan McLeay scripsit:

> I noticed John didn't correct the 'to give' in the translation. Is it
> grammatical in some dialects to use the 'to' there? (It certainly isn't
> in mine: you'd say 'Don't you dare give that to the man!'.)
"Dare" fluctuates between being a pure modal and an ordinary verb with
an infinitive complement:  "Dare to be yourself" would sound very odd
to me as "Dare be yourself", but I admit that "Don't dare to do it" is
not quite as idiomatic as "Don't dare do it".

--
John Cowan   <jcowan@...>   http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
"One time I called in to the central system and started working on a big
thick 'sed' and 'awk' heavy duty data bashing script.  One of the geologists
came by, looked over my shoulder and said 'Oh, that happens to me too.
Try hanging up and phoning in again.'"  --Beverly Erlebacher

Reply