Dative construction
The dative construction is a grammatical way of constructing a sentence, using the dative case. A sentence is also said to be in dative construction if the subject and the object (direct or indirect) can switch their places for a given verb, without altering the verb's structure (subject becoming the new object, and the object becoming the new subject). The latter case is not to be confused with the passive voice, where only the "direct" object of a sentence becomes the subject of the passive-voiced sentence, and the verb's structure also changes to convey the  meaning of the passive voice. The dative construction tends to occur when the verb indicates a state rather than an action. Examples. German. In German, the dative construction sometimes occurs with the verb "sein" ("to be"). Compare: The first example implies that the speaker has a cold personality. The subject here ("ich", "I") is in the nominative case. The second construction is used when one wants to say "I am (feeling) cold" in German. While in English the subject of the sentence "I am cold" is "I", in German the subject of the sentence ""Mir ist kalt"" is "kalt", and  mir ("me"-DATIVE) is the indirect object. The use of the nominative form equivalent to "I" is only possible with a different meaning: "Ich bin kalt"='I am cold (in personality)'. "Mir" behaves like a subject and can control infinitives: Icelandic. Dative constructions are extremely common in Icelandic. Their use is similar to that of German, although perhaps somewhat more widespread. The following example is exactly the same as the German one given above: The implication of the first example is the same as in German, that the speaker has a cold personality rather than feeling physically cold. Dative constructions appear in  many fixed expressions such as this, such as "mér er alveg sama" ("I don't care", lit. "to me it's completely the same"), "henni er annt um umhverfið" ("she cares about the environment", lit. "to her is dear about the environment") and "þú getur fengið nýjan síma þér að kostnaðarlausu" ("you can get a new phone free of charge", lit. "you can get a new phone to you at no cost"). Passive constructions in Icelandic also require the subject to be in the dative if the verb in question governs the dative, e.g., ("the timetable was changed"), ("the documents  were deleted") and "framkvæmdum var frestað um tvær vikur" ("works were delayed by two weeks"). Compare to passive constructions where the verb governs the accusative: "búðin var opnuð á föstudaginn" ("the shop was opened on Friday") and ("the letter was sent before noon"). Verbs that govern the genitive behave in the same way as verbs governing the dative, e.g. "þín verður saknað" ("you will be missed"). Finally, certain verbs require the subject to be in the dative. This is particularly common with verbs of emotion or opinion. For example: This phenomenon is not only restricted to the dative case, some  verbs require their subject to be in the accusative: In all of the above instances, the verbs used in these constructions are in the third-person singular form. Hindi. Dative constructions are extremely common in Hindi. It always makes use of a pronoun or noun in the dative case which acts as the subject and the copula verb "to be" (होना, ɦonɑ) in the 3rd person conjugations. Dative construction in Hindi has no restrictions on type of verb that can be used with it. Hence any verb in any grammatical aspect, mood, or tense of Hindi can be used in  the dative construction. The following are some examples showing dative construction: Passive forms construction in Hindi can make use of both the nominative and the dative case as subjects without any change of meaning. When the subject is nominative the nuance is such that the focus is only on the receiver (subject) being on the receiving end of the action, and when dative pronoun is used the nuance is such that the focus is on the doer that did the action to the receiver (even though the doer might not be present in the sentence). It is the nuance that  decides which grammatical case noun/pronoun to use, the meaning/translation of both are the same. However, the verb agreement pattern in both constructions are different. When the dative case is used, the verb shows agreement in gender and number with the direct object (or, takes the default masculine when no object is present), but when the subject is in the nominative case, the verb shows agreement with the nominative subject of the sentence, also, the copula agrees with the nominative subject in its conjugation and it cannot be restricted to the third person. An example showing the equivalency  of the usage of dative and nominative pronouns in the passive construction is below: Notes: Spanish. A number of verbs in Spanish employ a dative construction. Many of these verbs express psychological states; the most common one is "gustar", which is equivalent to English "like" (but syntactically functions like "be pleasant to"). The verb agrees with the formal/morphological subject, but the subject is usually placed after the verb instead of before, as usual. The dative construction requires a clitic pronoun; if the dative argument is a full noun phrase or needs to be explicitly stated, it is shown by  a phrase with the preposition "a". Other verbs which show this pattern are "apasionar" ("to be passionate about"), "antojarse" ("to have a feeling for"), "encantar" ("to adore"), "faltar" ("to be lacking"), "quedar" ("to fall") and "sobrar" ("to be left"). Serbo-Croatian. In Serbo-Croatian (as in other Slavic languages), the dative construction is often used, mostly in the same manner as in German: Some verbs, like "nedostajati" ("lack") use dative constructions: Georgian dative construction. The dative construction is very common in Georgian. The dative construction of Georgian differs somewhat from German, in that the dative case agrees with a certain  person marking on the verb. The dative construction occurs in the perfect (not perfective) tense of transitive verbs and in all the tenses of some verbs, such as "to want", "to have", "to forget" and "to remember". These verbs are also called "indirect verbs" by some generativists. Compare: In Georgian, the -s suffix is the dative case marker. In the first sentence, "bavshvebi" ("children") is the subject and in the nominative case. "Tsqals" ("water") is the object and in the dative case (with the suffix -"s" attached). In the second sentence, however, the subject (children) is in the dative case  (with -"s"), and the object (water) is in the nominative case. The verb in the imperfective and perfective sentences are conjugated in accordance with the subject of the sentence (regardless of the case of the subject); they are both third person plural. Perfect verbs also agree in part with their dative case subjects (in this case the -u- between da- and ), but only have third person verb endings (singular form for all singular persons and ALSO first person plural; plural form for 2nd/3rd person plural). Therefore, "I have drunk water" would be: The dative construction is also a separate class  of verbs (Class IV) which have the semantics of experience, cognitive processes, and possession (all common DAT-construction predicates in languages which have them). An example of this can be given with the possessive verb "kona" ("to have"): In all the tenses, the subject "kals" ("woman") is in the dative case, and the object "tsigni" ("book") is in the nominative case. Etymologically, the root is also found in the future forms of the copula 'be', making it very much like the Latin dative possession construction 'mihi est X'. Again, all singular persons have an agreeing proclitic pronoun on the verb , but a third person singular verb ending (-a or -s). Finnish. The genitive case is used in dative constructions. The "dative genitive" ("datiivigenetiivi") is no longer productive in Finnish language, and it is often replaced with other cases, except in frozen expressions, e.g. "luojan kiitos" (thanks to god). The dative genitive is often used with verb infinitives. Latin. Latin uses a dative construction for indirect objects ("dativus possessivus"). Hungarian. Hungarian uses a similar construction to Latin for rendering possession without the verb "to have" which is missing from Hungarian.