>It is interesting that Wallace labels this as an "Ethical Dative" or a
>"Dative of Feeling" meaning "as far as I am concerned". This looks like
>another new category that he has created. I think that the gloss involved in
>1:21 may be subsumed under the standard category of Davitve of Reference,
>where one might supply "with reference to", "concerning" or "in regard to".
>
>Cindy Westfall
>PhD Student Roehampton
The ethical dative still survives in a few places in English, usually as an
archaism. One example that occurs to me is the line from the old folk song
"On Top of Old Rhodie":
"Write me a letter,
Send it by mail,
Send it in care of
Birmingham gaol."
That me probably does indicate the recipient of the letter, but the
beneficiary of the letter, "for me, on my behalf," i.e. to the jail
authorities. I hope others can list examples of the ethical dative in
English. [And "yes" in advance to those of you who will certainly point out
that this could also be a dativus commodi, closely related to the ethical
dative.]
While I'm talking, to use that metaphor of speech for e-mail, I usually
don't get around to responding to submissions to b-greek very rapidly,
since I do all of it at home in the evening. And usually I simply nod my
head to indicate "yes" when I read what Carl Conrad says about Greek
philological matters.
So I nodded "yes" to his use of verb complement some time ago, but feel
that it can best be used as a gloss on the traditional language of grammar.
One function of teaching a language is to prepare students to use the
standard reference works--and like it or not, the language of "indirect
object" and "directo object" is too firmly imbedded in the grammatical
literature to be abandoned. One must interpret it, to be sure--and that may
be all that Carl intended.
I liked very much the reference to the adnominal description of the
genitive and the adverbial description of the accusative. Thanks to J.
Whatmough. That is the kind of illuminating gloss on received terminology
that I think is especially illuminating!
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