Genative or dative?

[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.

[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]

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

[MiguelM]

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.

[Kasper]

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?

[MiguelM]

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.