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Personal datives | Yale Grammatical Diversity Project: English in North America (ygdp.yale.edu)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Native English speakers, how do you use personal datives? Today I came across an interesting text on the phenomenon here. Here are some examples from the text:

4] a. I got me some candy.

b. You got you some candy.

c. We got us some candy.

5] a. He got him some candy.

b. She got her some candy.

c. *It got it some candy.

d. They got them some candy.

(5c is marked with * to mark its grammatical unacceptability)

As a non-native speaker, I find sentences (4a) and (4c) to be natural, although I'd probably never use them myself. However, other sentences are odd to me, and seem as if they would cause confusion, they could be interpreted as if the subject got the candy for someone else. (4b), with 'you', is even more odd to my ears, even though a cited study says it is much more common than 3rd person constructions.

How do you perceive these sentences, are they all acceptable/natural to you?

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[–] apolo399 2 points 3 weeks ago

Spanish also has 4 different datives: dativo de interés (dative of interest), dativo posesivo (possesive dative), dativo ético (ethical dative), and dativo aspectual (aspectual dative). All really common. The dativo ético is, as I understand it, equivalent to "on me" in "the dog died on me" while the dative from the OP would be the dativo de interés.