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The original purpose of "dative" verbs | ||
Tags: Verbs/Conjugation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4845 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes  Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 25 of 32 27 August 2012 at 11:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
Uh, this is a tough question as my knowledge of German grammar is rather intuitive. I have never formally studied the linguistics of German. I think one cannot say that all verbs without prefixes only take one object. "Geben" comes to my mind: "Ich gebe dir etwas." Then there's the synonymous "reichen": "Ich reiche es dir". "Zeigen": "Er zeigte mir die Stadt." "Zahlen" and "bezahlen" don't conform to this rule either. "Er hat mir das Geld gezahlt" has both dative and accusative. "Bezahlen" however only takes the accusative: "Er hat die Rechnung bezahlt." "Brechen" and "zerbrechen" don't take any dative objects at all. You can't break something to somebody. Often prefixes make an intransitive verb transitive: "lügen" vs. "belügen". Or they indicate a different lexical aspect (Aktionsart). How this affects the valency of the verbs is a question I leave for others to answer. Edited by Josquin on 28 August 2012 at 12:05am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| outcast Bilingual Heptaglot Senior Member China Joined 4950 days ago 869 posts - 1364 votes Speaks: Spanish*, English*, German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Mandarin Studies: Korean | Message 26 of 32 28 August 2012 at 12:10am | IP Logged | |||||
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I understand, I didn't mean to say the rule was fast and hard, I know better than that, but I thought that based on your examples it was perhaps a general pattern.
Geben, zeigen, are classic ditransitive verbs in most languages I would dare to say, and extremely common. But "lesen", is not as clear-cut. For example "I am reading a magazine vs I am reading a magazine to her". In English, it is the same verb. Unless "vorlesen" means that in that case the prefix acts more as a prepositional marker (meaning without being a preposition, it allows increased valency), than a semantic marker (change in meaning), which is possible. But for a non-native, if my statement is even true, it would be difficult to distinguish when a prefix changes meaning vs simply changing valency. The prefix "be" is easy because it is the classic German prefix to transitivize a verb. Edited by outcast on 28 August 2012 at 12:13am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Edudg Pentaglot Newbie Brazil Joined 4672 days ago 16 posts - 28 votes Speaks: Portuguese*, Italian, English, French, Spanish Studies: Mandarin, Swedish | Message 27 of 32 28 August 2012 at 12:54am | IP Logged | |||||
Interesting thread. I'd like to clarify some points in Medulin's post: Verb " assistir": it is true that in colloquial brazilian portuguese "assistir" is always accusative and that we can see examples of this even in contemporary literature: "Trata-se de um filme que eu assistia" (Clarice Lispector em Água Viva) However, in school you still learn that the verb "assistir" (meaning to watch, to attend, to be present) takes an indirect object ("assistir ao jogo" ), and you will probably fail your portuguese exam if you write otherwise (in my school you certainly would). It takes though a direct object when its meaning is "to help", "to aid", "to assist" : "O médico assistiu o doente" Most grammarians still find it difficult to fully accept the colloquial use of this verb, like Celso Cunha and Lindley Cintra (A Nova Gramática do Português Contemporâneo, 2007), for example, that point out that there is a "tradição gramatical" and a "linguagem coloquial brasileira". The verb "agradecer" takes a direct object and an indirect object (agradecer algo a alguém) : "Agradeceu- lhes o favor" (ind.obj. + dir. obj.), "Agradeceu ao professor" (ind. obj.), "Agradeceu as flores" (dir. obj.) In the colloquial spoken language you may hear: "Agradeceu o professor" and " Agradeceu pelas flores" Verb "ajudar : "eu lhe ajudo" is completely wrong. Furthermore, I don't recall listening to this construction in the spoken language very often. I think it is mostly used by uneducated people in the written form because it "sounds more formal", if that makes any sense. For the third person "Eu o ajudo" (more common in the written language) or "Eu ajudo ele/ela" (spoken language) are the correct forms. For the second person: "Eu ajudo você /Eu te ajudo/Eu ajudo o senhor(a)" . To discuss the colloquial use of the language we should consider discussing diatopic and diastratic variations, as Brazil is a huge country with great social inequalities. Even if all of your examples reflect the real language in some way (some to a greater and some to a lesser extent), I thought that it was relevant to emphasize the correct use of the language so that it is clear to everyone. Edited by Edudg on 28 August 2012 at 1:08am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| LaughingChimp Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4700 days ago 346 posts - 594 votes Speaks: Czech* | Message 28 of 32 28 August 2012 at 8:53am | IP Logged | |||||
You can use genitive/possesive (I'm sory, I can't figure out any rule when is used which one) in Czech as well, but the meaning is slightly different. Dative is used when the party is the target or in some way interested in the outcome, while posessive/genitive is just about the object. "otrávil jí psa" implies either that she was hurt by it or that he did it to hurt her. "otrávil jejího psa" is talking just about the dog with no relation to her. Thank you pointing this out, because it probably wasn't clear from my desription. Edited by LaughingChimp on 28 August 2012 at 8:55am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 29 of 32 28 August 2012 at 11:27am | IP Logged | |||||
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Er hat mir (dat.) den Hund (acc.) des Lehrers (gen.) vergiftet (he has poisoned the teacher's dog to make me happy... maybe it barked)
'for my sake' or 'for my part' can also be expressed with "meinetwegen" Edit: 's' removed from meinetwegen Edited by Iversen on 28 August 2012 at 8:34pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Josquin Heptaglot Senior Member Germany Joined 4845 days ago 2266 posts - 3992 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian | Message 30 of 32 28 August 2012 at 2:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
Okay, this sentence is grammatically correct, but it doesn't make any sense. If you want to express that I benefited from the dog being poisoned, you would rather say: "Er hat den Hund des Lehrers für mich vergiftet."
The word is "meinetwegen" -- without 's'. Edited by Josquin on 28 August 2012 at 2:13pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Medulin Tetraglot Senior Member Croatia Joined 4669 days ago 1199 posts - 2192 votes Speaks: Croatian*, English, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Hindi, Nepali | Message 31 of 32 29 August 2012 at 1:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
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In formal Portuguese DATIVE and GENITIVE can mean the same thing:
Ele fugiu-me (dative) ~ Ele fugiu de mim (genitive) Ele matou-lhe a filha (dative) ~ Ele matou a filha dele (genitive) Edited by Medulin on 29 August 2012 at 1:10pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4640 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 32 of 32 29 August 2012 at 4:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
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In Spanish you also have the interesting use of dative with reflexive verbs in constructions like: "Se me (DATIVE) ha roto la pierna" (I have broken a/my leg) or "Se le (DATIVE) han perdido las llaves" (He has lost the/his keys). I believe the underlying idea in this type of sentence is that to break a leg (or lose your keys) is something that happens to a person, not something that person actively does.
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