Genative or dative?

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brozelle
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Genative or dative?

Post by brozelle »

I've got this sentence: Puella nautae rosás dat. I know rosas has a macron instead of an accent mark, but i'm not sure how to put that in. Anyways, what makes nautae dative singular instead of genative singular? "the girl is giving roses to the sailor" is just as appropriate as "the sailor's girl is giving roses". At least to me it is.

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Ivansalgadogarcia
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Re: Genative or dative?

Post by Ivansalgadogarcia »

I guess it depends the most from the context, however, verb DARE needs both direct and indirect complements, so, if the sentence is isolated, I'll chose the dative, but genitive is not bad.

Swth\r
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Re: Genative or dative?

Post by Swth\r »

Ivansalgadogarcia wrote:I guess it depends the most from the context, however, verb DARE needs both direct and indirect complements, so, if the sentence is isolated, I'll chose the dative, but genitive is not bad.
+1
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anphph
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Re: Genative or dative?

Post by anphph »

Yeah, what Ivan said.

Really, for all that matters it could even be nominative plural. It's the context that can tell them apart. In this case it's obviously dative.

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Re: Genative or dative?

Post by Kasper »

MiguelM wrote:Yeah, what Ivan said.

Really, for all that matters it could even be nominative plural.
nominative plural? I can't see how that would work with a singular verb... I assume you mean vocative?
“Cum ego verbo utar,” Humpty Dumpty dixit voce contempta, “indicat illud quod optem – nec plus nec minus.”
“Est tamen rogatio” dixit Alice, “an efficere verba tot res indicare possis.”
“Rogatio est, “Humpty Dumpty responsit, “quae fiat magister – id cunctum est.”

anphph
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Re: Genative or dative?

Post by anphph »

I was confirming what they'd said earlier, and meant in the logic of "word out of context". Taken out of context, "nautae" could be tons of things, genitive, nominative, dative, vocative... But the context makes it clear, as Ivan said, that it almost certainly has to be dative.

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