Talk:Dative case

message: The first sentence indicates that the dative case is used to mark a direct object. However, the rest of the article implies that the dative case is used for the indirect object! Someone who knows a bit more about this should clarify this. Perhaps a section comparing the dative and accustive cases would be in order, along with their correlations with direct and indirect objects. --Scorpiuss
Yes, the introduction is wrong. 217.30.32.17 (talk) 14:56, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  First sentence wrong? 

message: The two German examples given in the article, while not technically incorrect, are somewhat awkward:
* Ich gebe das Buch zum Kassierer
* Ich habe das Buch an meinen Freund geschenkt.
A German speaker would say neither of these things - rather, they'd say "Ich gebe das Buch dem Kassierer" and "Ich habe das Buch meinem Freund geschenkt". -- Schnee (cheeks clone) 22:25, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  German examples 

message: Please see discussion on the other article's talk page. CapnPrep 16:10, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge [[Dative construction]] here 

message: I'm not convinced that in a sentence 'I call John', John is the direct object, John is the indirect object here. The direct object is the message you relay to him which is explicit per context as that's usually what a phone call does. Analogous to 'I give John a book' we obtain 'I call John a message.' Or even more explicitly 'I write John a letter'. The person whom one calls is an indirect object I believe, not a direct object. Rajakhr (talk) 05:54, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: But unlike your examples with give and write, "I call a message (to John)" and "I call John a message" are not grammatical. So "a message" is not the direct object. This does not mean that "John" is necessarily the direct object in "I call John", but I don't see any good reasons to say otherwise. (For example, one might be tempted to say that "John" is an indirect object in "I wrote John" because you can also say "I wrote to John". But "I call to John" does not mean the same thing as "I call John".) CapnPrep (talk) 17:27, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  'I call John a message' is grammatical I'd reckon, it's just not said a lot as 'calling' implies what is said. However saying 'I just called John a very angry message after he ate all children in the school.' is done more often as the angry part of if is not implied by the calling itself. The two examples you gave, the only language I feel I have a sufficient command over that uses a dative case is German, and there with the verb 'anrufen', using the dative or accusative case means a very slight nuance which is comparable to 'I call to John' and 'I call John', I think the Russian use of the dative is semantically more akin to 'I call to John' but the presence of the 'to' in English connotates a very marginal difference. Rajakhr (talk) 09:02, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm afraid it's still not grammatical ("*I just called John a very angry message…"). It just doesn't work with this meaning of call (= phone). CapnPrep (talk) 12:18, 5 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd say that is unusual / poetic but grammatical. Regardless, a native speaker of Russian has just informed me that in Russian, it is possible to put the message you relay with the verb as ditransitive, which is then put into the accusative case, which makes it all but completely out of question that the person whom you call to is the indirect object, not the direct and the message you put through is the direct object, in Russian at least. Rajakhr (talk) 17:08, 6 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dative case in Russian and related 

message: "In British usage, "Give it to me" can be rendered as either "Give me it" or in American usage "Give it me.""
I am fairly certain that "Give it me" is not correct grammar in the English language.  I cannot think of a situation in English where an indirect object is not preceded by a preposition.  I suggest that the quoted text be removed.
Philmac (talk) 04:28, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Dative Case in English 

message: How are these delineated from the commodi? The king benefits from my fighting; honor benefits from my death. Maybe other examples should be used in the finalis case. -- 92.229.98.128 (talk) 01:33, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  finalis examples in Greek 

message: The section on Slavic begins with discussion of endings, something that's not the most important thing. For Latin and Greek endings are not discussed at all. Croatian (my native language) uses possessive and ethical dative a lot, Greek and Latin examples could be translated almost word-by-word with the same meaning. I think the section should be reworked emphasizing use of datives, which is as complex as in Greek (actually, slightly less so, since most Slavic languages have more cases than Greek and they take some functions of the Greek dative. Opinions? dnik ► 10:44, 29 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Slavic dative 

message: I deleted the Armenian section because it was completely wrong.
grandexandi (talk) 12:02, 15 February 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deletion of Armenian section 

message: I think it's not particularly helpful to have only sections by language. For instance, the ethic dative is a rather universal concept which can be used to interpret linguistic phenomena in several languages. Some instances come straight from Latin, but not all of them. --Nemo 21:09, 11 October 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Subdivision by language

message: It is clear from the examples in Greek, Latin and German that the dative has other uses besides giving. There are even uses not included, such as the locative dative (dative of time). A line in the introduction mentions assimilation of other now-extinct cases. Are there any hypotheses of what these were and how the dative evolved? Or is the name "dative" misleading and it is - and was, indeed - a single case pertaining to indirect objects?Skamnelis (talk) 14:55, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Is dative a single case? 

message: An examples section would be helpful in this article. There is one in the nominative case article!
Adlihtam (talk) 14:28, 6 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Examples section 

message: The dative object in German cannot be a direct object. If it were a direct object, it would require the accusative case and passivisation would be possible. Verbs with the dative object are intransitive in German.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.26.183.218 (talk) 15:37, 2 November 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dative object not direct object