Re: Ethical dative (was: Question about transitivity etc.)
| From: | Wesley Parish <wes.parish@...> |
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| Date: | Tuesday, June 3, 2003, 9:52 |
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What does interest me in relation to the dative and Yhe Vala Lakha, which uses
a dative form for an "existential" statement
|nyaberiti, ya ratwa, ya nipia| - "(to be a) Man is both a summons and a
challenge"
Are there any other languages which use the dative in such a manner?
Wesley Parish
On Mon, 02 Jun 2003 23:49, you wrote:
> Christophe Grandsire scripsit:
> > And I'm not talking about those "inclusion of the listener" forms
> > frequent in colloquial speech like "... et je te lui ai flanqué une
> > sacrée raclée !", where "te" has no function in the sentence except
> > conviviality :)) (strangely enough, Basque is the only other language I
> > know which has the same feature).
>
> Actually, it's common in the world's languages. Latin had it, e.g.:
>
> at tibi repente venit mihi Cani:nius
> but you-DAT suddenly comes-3SG-PRES-IND me-DAT Cani:nius-NOM
>
> where "tibi" does not literally mean that Caninius comes to the speaker
> *for the listener's benefit*, but simply that the listener is thought
> to be concerned in the action somehow. This is the so-called "ethical
> dative" (Gk. _ethikos_ 'character'), and can occur with all persons:
>
> quid mihi Celsus agit
> what-ACC me-DAT Celsus-NOM does-3SG-PRES-IND
>
> similarly does not mean "What is Celsus doing for me?" but simply
> "What is Celsus doing?", with the "mihi" expressing the speaker's
> interest in the answer. Third-person examples exist but tend not to
> be as clear.
>
> The ethical dative occurs in a wide variety of other languages as well:
>
> German: Er ist *mir* ein guter Freund = he is a good friend of mine.
>
> Middle English: Thus me pileth the pore, that is of lute pris = Thus
> they rob the poor ("me" shows the speaker's concern about it),
> who are of little worth.
>
> Early Modern English: There are more things in heaven and earth
> than are dreamed of in *your* philosophy (Hamlet to Horatio).
>
> Spanish: Juan *me* le arruin'o la vida a esa chica. = Juan ruined the
> life of this girl (speaker concern again).
>
> Classical Greek: *emoi* dh ou crh oupoute tauta poihsai = *IMHO* one
> never ought to do that. :-)
>
> I have also found references to its use in Polish, Czech, Estonian,
> Romanian, Ingush, and Warlpiri.
>
> --
> Henry S. Thompson said, / "Syntactic, structural, John Cowan
> Value constraints we / Express on the fly." jcowan@reutershealth.com
> Simon St. Laurent: "Your / Incomprehensible
>
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