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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] 3 points 1 week ago

Just as additional info, as this doesn't answer your question (sorry!):

I've seen constructions like this popping up in other languages, under different names. In Portuguese for example it's called "pronome de interesse" (pronoun of interest) or "dativo ético" (ethical dative). Often used alongside commands, like this:

Por favor, não [me]¹ conte [para os outros]² [o que aconteceu]³.
Please, [for my sake]¹, don't tell [the others]² [what happened]³.

I've tagged 1 = the ethic dative, 2 = the indirect object, and 3 = the direct object. Since the verb (contar, to tell) already got its two objects, that ⟨me⟩ cannot be an object requirement of the verb.

It's typically associated with informal speech, but attested across multiple dialects (see e.g. this and this). And apparently it backtracks all the way into Latin.

German and Ancient Greek also show the same phenomenon.

Based on that I'd probably guess that what you're seeing in English is the leftover of some really old feature, so it'll probably surface across multiple dialects, even if Dixie English sticks with it a bit more.