What is the Dative of Possession?
What is the Dative of Possession?

Summary/Abstract: Possessive dative is a notion which recurs in the description of many languages that have overt case marking distinctions between nominatives (typical subjects), accusatives (typical direct objects) and datives (typical indirect objects). The basic ideas lurking behind the term possessive dative are that it is semantically equivalent to possesive determiners or genitives and that it can be used only with a limited set of nouns, which is usually restricted to nouns denoting inalienable possession (e. g. kinship terms and body parts). This paper argues that possessive datives are not derived from the same source as possessive determiners or genitives and that they are therefore not semantically and pragmatically equivalent with them. The evidence in support of this claim is mainly adduced from Croatian, German and Polish, but a comparison is also made with some equivalent constructions in Dutch. More specifically, it is argued that the so-called dative of possession is a pragmatic device which enables the speaker to empathize with the referent of the dative, that is, to present the state of affairs expressed by the predication from the point of view of the referent of the dative.

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