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 can switch their places for a given verb, without altering the verb's structure. 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.
In German, the dative construction sometimes occurs with the verb sein. Compare: The first example implies that the speaker has a coldpersonality. The subject here is in the nominative case. The second construction is used when one wants to say "I am 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 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 '. "Mir" behaves like a subject and can control infinitives: "Mir war zu kalt um zur Kirche zu gehen" me.DAT was too cold for to.the.Fem.D church to go.INFIN 'I was too cold to go to church'
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, henni er annt um umhverfið and þú getur fengið nýjan síma þér að kostnaðarlausu. Passive constructions in Icelandic also require the subject to be in the dative if the verb in question governs the dative, e.g. tímaáætluninni var breytt, skjölunum var eytt and framkvæmdum var frestað um tvær vikur. Compare to passive constructions where the verb governs the accusative: búðin var opnuð á föstudaginn and bréfið var sent fyrir hádegi. Verbs that govern the genitive behave in the same way as verbs governing the dative, e.g. þín verður saknað. 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.
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. 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, antojarse, encantar, faltar, quedar and sobrar.
In Serbo-Croatian, the dative construction is often used, mostly in the same manner as in German: literally "I am cold", meaning "I am a cold person". literally "It is cold to me", meaning "I am cold".
Some verbs, like nedostajati use dative constructions: literally "Teeth to him lack".
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 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 is the subject and in the nominative case. Tsqals is the object and in the dative case. In the second sentence, however, the subject is in the dative case, and the object is in the nominative case. The verb in the imperfective and perfective sentences are conjugated in accordance with the subject of the sentence ; they are both third person plural. Perfect verbs also agree in part with their dative case subjects, but only have third person verb endings. Therefore, "I have drunk water" would be: The dative construction is also a separate class of verbs which have the semantics of experience, cognitive processes, and possession. An example of this can be given with the possessive verb kona : In all the tenses, the subject kals is in the dative case, and the object tsigni 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.
Finnish
The genitive case is used in dative constructions. The "dative genitive" is no longer productive in Finnish language, and it is often replaced with other cases, except in frozen expressions, e.g. luojan kiitos. The dative genitive is often used with verb infinitives.
