Telling apart Dative and Ablative plural, part 2

In the last entry, we talked about how the neuter can be tricky to distinguish between its Nominative and Accusative forms. I brought this up because it is an easier entry point into distinguishing cases. In this post, which is nearly book length, I'll tell you some of the things that should tip you off to the Dative case.

1. Indirect object

Several verbs tip off this use of the Dative case. Dare, mittere, and habere are a few. Let's try an example.

Flumen urbibus aquam dabat

Let's ditch urbibus from the sentence for now, because it has a tricky signal: it could be Dative or Ablative. As you're working, you need to keep both possibilities in mind. Otherwise, it's pretty easily classified as a straight up garden-variety sentence. First subject (flumen), then direct object (aquam) and the verb last (dabat). The river was giving water. Ok. Now back to urbibus. As soon as we get to the verb, it makes us ask "To whom is the river giving water?" You immediately want an indirect object, so the choice between Dative and Ablative should be pretty clear cut. So, the sentence translates as "The river gives the cities water."

2. Compound verbs

These should tip you off right away. The reason is that when a verb compounds, there is no longer any need for the preposition which is now part of the verb. The object of the preposition can't hang out as it is, so it moves to dative. Let's look at a phrasal verb in English to see how we don't repeat prepositions either.

We moved out of the house yesterday.

It is as if out is doing double duty as part of the verb and as a preposition. You would never say

We moved out yesterday out of the house.

See how the preposition out is repeated in the second sentence? It sounds gross. Well, the same thing is typical for Latin. Here's an example.

Cicero senatoribus decessit.

Again, we'll strip the sentence of senatoribus while we deal with the rest. Nothing fancy. It means "Cicero left." Again, it makes us ask, "What did Cicero leave?" But first a detour into the verb. Decessit has two parts. The first is the preposition de (meaning down from), and the second is the verb form of cessit (meaning he left). Put the two together and you get your compound verb. Now, I could have just as easily have said

Cicero de senatoribus decessit.

Here it is pretty obvious senatoribus is Ablative. But now I've got de repeated in the sentence, and I don't really need that. So, here's what I can do: I ditch the preposition in favor of the compound verb. Since I still need to have the senators in a case, I use Dative to indicate that it belongs to the de in the compound verb. Ecce! That's our answer. Senatoribus is Dative, because it compliments the de in our compound verb. The sentence means "Cicero left the senators."

Bottom line: be on the look out for Dative when you see a compound verb.

3. Intransitive verbs

Yet another tip off. There is a fleet of verbs that when translated in to English seem to have their direct object in the Dative. So let's call it a Dative "direct object." Nocere, dolere, and parcere all come to mind. Let's see it in action.

Iudex latronibus non parsit.

Again, let's dispose with the ambiguous latronibus for now. The rest of the sentence is very simple. Iudex is our subject. Non negates the verb. And parsit is our verb from parco, parcere, parsi, parsus. So we get "The judge did not spare." Again, whom did he not spare? In English we expect a direct object, but in this case Latin doesn't allow for that. Why? It doesn't. Our verb is intransitive, so no direct object in the Accusative case. Just a Dative "direct object."

In this case, its "direct object" is Dative. Again, we have our answer. Latronibus is Dative. The sentence means "The judge did not spare the theives."

How will you know which verbs want a Dative "direct object"? Any dictionary should tell you this information, though the glossary at the back of your textbook may not. You may have to memorize these.

4. A linking verb

Whenever you see a linking verb, particularly if there is a gerundive hanging out, get on the lookout for Dative case. These uses of Dative are called Dative of Possession and Dative of Agent. Here are examples:

Militibus sunt castra.

Ok, this is very easy. Again we'll skip over militibus for now. We don't have enough context yet. Sunt castra is easy: There is a camp. I see the linking verb. I see the ambiguous militibus. Is it Dative or Ablative? In situations like this, pick Dative. The sentence translates as "There is a camp to the soldiers." But that sounds really bad, so we turn it around to "The soldiers have a camp." It's more idiomatic in English that way. Dative of Possession is an idiomatic feature of Latin.

Karthago Romanis delenda est.

The gerundive delenda doesn't change things up much. The linking verb est still tells us to choose Dative over Ablative. The sentence still translates the same way: "Carthage is to be destroyed for the Romans." However this sounds very clunky in English and doesn't capture the necessity of destroying Carthage. So let's deal with the gerundive first. "Carthage must be destroyed for the Romans." Again, we've got that non-idiomatic "for the Romans" going on. To smooth things out in English we might say "Carthage must be destroyed by the Romans." or "The Romans must destroy Carthage." The Dative of Agent is highly idiomatic in Latin, so any translation will necessarily vary from it.

Bottom line: Esse in all of its forms—and there are too many—is a trigger for Dative.

5. Special adjectives

Some adjectives complete their meanings with Dative case. I'll use similis as my example.

Acres, similes quercibus, folia autumno amittunt.

I've set similes quercibus off with commas, because I want to focus on that. The rest of the sentence means "Maples lose their leaves in fall." Similes means "like." And I don't mean like like. I mean similar. So now the sentence means "Maples, like, lose their leaves in fall." But that hardly seems complete. The word similis wants a Dative noun to tell you what its antecedent is like. So quercibus must be Dative since it is hanging out so close to similes. Finally we have it. "Maples, like oaks, lose their leaves in fall."

Conclusion

So often context will lead you to the right resolution in the Dative/Ablative confusion. We've seen five ways that context leads us to the right answer. In several cases, particularly 1, 3 and 5, the sentence sounds incomplete without the information the Dative case supplies. In 2 we saw how compound verbs have the preposition and force the former object of preposition into the Dative case. In 4 we saw the very idiomatic Dative of Possession and Dative of Agent.

Next time: signals for the Ablative.

This work by Peter Sipes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.