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Reflexive Dative in Germanic Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| tritone Senior Member United States reflectionsinpo Joined 6121 days ago 246 posts - 385 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, French | Message 1 of 4 12 September 2012 at 12:11am | IP Logged | ||
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http://southernnationalist.com/blog/2011/06/06/reflexive-dat ives-in-southern-english/
I recently read this interesting article about how the use of the reflexive dative in Southern American English is a conservative feature common to other Germanic languages. For Example: He caught him some fish for dinner. I caught me some fish... Is this really the normal way to say this in other Germanic languages? How would you say the above sentence in dutch/swed/dan/nor/old Eng/Icelandic? Does anybody know? Edited by tritone on 12 September 2012 at 12:13am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4623 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 2 of 4 12 September 2012 at 12:40am | IP Logged | ||
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German does this sometimes.
Ich kaufe mir einen Mantel - I'm buying (me) a coat. 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 3 of 4 12 September 2012 at 11:31am | IP Logged | ||
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"Jeg gik mig en tur" in Danish --> hyperliteral translation: 'I walked me a tour' (I went for a walk)
And the oldest Danish song text from around 1300: "Drømde mik en drøm i nat um: silki ok ærlik pæl" in Middle Danish --> 'Dreamt me a dream on night (=this last night) about silk and honest 'pæl'*" (there are wild discussions about the meaning of the word "pæl", but it seems to mean something like 'measure') The lack of a formal subject in this last example puts it in the same category as German examples like "Mir ist kalt" (with 'mir' in the Dative). In sentences with an explicit subject the 'interested witness' in the dative (or accusative) may be the same one who does the action, and sometimes you may then have a feeling that the same entity is present both as a 'doer' and a 'witness' - which could be seen as a somewhat schizophrenic situation. On the other hand the inbuilt object in a reflexive construction would typically be a true (logical) object. In English and other Germanic languages it is not really correct to speak of unstressed pronouns because they aren't really unstressed, whereas they are a clearly marked category in for instance the Romance languages. So it isn't a big deal to add a 'witness ' or 'recipient', and because English hasn't got a dative the accusative form will be used. However the question is then whether the reflexive forms with -self should be used when the 'witness/recipient' also is the 'doer', and it may be a dialectal feature whether the 'clean' forms are retained in this situation, ie. whether the forms with -self are seens as facultative. Edited by Iversen on 12 September 2012 at 11:47am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tractor Tetraglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5454 days ago 1349 posts - 2292 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, Catalan Studies: French, German, Latin | Message 4 of 4 15 September 2012 at 12:01am | IP Logged | ||
Norwegian too: Jeg kjøper meg en jakke. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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