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

submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week 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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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Native (midwestern American) English speaker here.

They all sound a little humorous to me. As if the speaker is speaking kindof playfully. Maybe as if to a young child, or perhaps putting on a purposefully-funny (southern American?) accent.

But aside from that, they all sound quite natural to me and I could see myself using any/all of them if I was in a relatively playful mood.

Even 5c doesn't seem unreasonable to me. (Maybe a pet of unknown gender got into the bag of candy? "Control your damned dog! It broke into my kitchen and it got it some candy out of my cupboard!")

That said, this isn't the first time I've seen an asterisk on a "grammatically incorrect" sentence/construction and thought "why did they mark that unacceptable?"

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The list of sentences is reproduced from an another study, and the Yale page that I've linked does note that others have found examples of such constructions with 'it', so it is true that the asterisk might be unwarranted.

Thank you for the feedback, so basically you don't perceive any difference between the sentences with regards to the person and number of the subject?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

Oh, I guess one thing about 4b. Thinking more about 4b, I find I can't really imagine it being said "you got you some candy" instead of "you gotchu some candy" or "you gotcha some candy".

Also, leaving out the personal dative feels too formal to use with young kids unless being at least a little stern.

Oh, and aside from the obvious differences in the pronouns involved ("she" only refers to female subjects, "it" only for "things"... can you tell I'm not that knowledgeable on linguistics jargon, lol) I don't really see much difference in who is referred to in those examples, nor in contrasting them with equivalent examples without the dative except for the aforementioned differences in formality and "playfulness".