So I was doing my usual research before starting my next video script and I came across this
question on Google, that I think needs addressed: “What is a dative sentence?” or “How
can you tell if a sentence is dative in German?”
This question has baffled me for years.
At least twice a year, I will have a student ask me this or something similar.
I’ll have my students label parts of sentences using the cases of nominative, accusative
and dative.
Inevitably I will get a few of them back in which students label entire sentences as nominative.
Other sentences as accusative and another group of sentences as dative.
“What is a dative sentence?” is like asking what is a footrest couch?
A footrest is not a couch.
You can’t have a footrest couch.
You can have a couch with a footrest, but there is no such thing as a footrest couch.
The same is true of dative sentences.
They don’t exist.
The dative case is a thing.
Sentences are a thing.
You can use the dative case within a sentence, but that does not make the sentence a dative
sentence.
Dative and all of the other cases, nominative, accusative and genitive, affect nouns and
their partners, adjectives, articles, and pronouns.
That means when you use one of those things in a sentence, you use the case that is appropriate
for that thing within the sentence.
Let’s take a look at an example in both English and German.
Mein Bruder gibt unserer Schwester ein Geschenk.
- My brother is giving our sister a gift.
In this sentence we have three out of four cases in German.
The sentence is not dative, or even accusative or nominative for that matter.
It is just a sentence.
You could classify it as a statement, but not as a case.
Cases are only used for nouns and their partners.
My brother in that sentence is the one acting.
That makes him the subject.
In German this is indicated by the nominative case.
In this sentence we can see that the nominative case is used, because “mein” (the possessive
adjective attached to our noun “Bruder”) does not have an ending.
A gift is the thing being directly acted upon by the subject.
That makes this the direct object and in German that is indicated with the accusative case.
The article in front of “Geschenk” is “ein”, which doesn’t immediately tell
us the case being used, but we can tell based on the word order, that this is the direct
object and it is accusative.
Our sister in this sentence is the one being given something.
She is receiving a gift.
That makes her the indirect object and in German that is indicated by the dative case.
We can readily tell that she is in the dative case in this sentence because the possessive
adjective in front of “Schwester” shows the dative case with the letters ER at the
end.
So, is this a dative sentence?
No.
Dative sentences don’t exist.
We have a sentence which includes three out of four cases.
The nominative “mein Bruder”.
The accusative “ein Geschenk”.
The dative “unserer Schwester”.
How could you possibly have a dative sentence if you can use multiple cases within a sentence?
The answer is simple.
You can’t.
Another often confusing idea that goes along with this problem is dative verbs.
Dative verbs are not called that because the verb is dative.
They are called that because their objects are dative.
This essentially means that the sentence skips the accusative case, which is usually used
for direct objects and uses the dative case instead.
I could go into the semantics of why that is and give you a bunch of details, but I
will do that in a few weeks when I make my video dedicated to dative verbs.
For now, just know this: dative verbs require dative objects.
The verb is not dative.
The sentence is not dative.
The object of that sentence using a dative verb is dative.
Mein Bruder hilft unserer Schwester.
- My brother helps our sister.
My brother is the subject again.
He is still the one doing something.
That means he is still nominative.
Our sister is the one being helped, which means that she is now the direct object instead
of the indirect object.
The verb used here, however, is “helfen”, which means “to help” and requires a dative
object.
Since our sister is the object of the sentence, she is represented in the dative case with
“unserer”.
Again, we have more than one case in a sentence, which means we can’t possibly say that this
sentence is one case or another.
Nouns and their partners within the sentence are used in the nominative and dative cases.
That is all.
What about sentences that don’t have more than one case?
Like the ones with “sein”?
This verb is often used with what we call a predicate nominative, so called, because
the thing behind the verb (predicate) is also nominative.
Mein Bruder ist ein Junge.
- My brother is a boy.
Both the boy and my brother are in the nominative case.
Does that make this a nominative sentence?
There are no other cases here?
No.
The verb doesn’t have a case.
The sentence doesn’t have a case.
The nouns and their partners within the sentence do have cases.
So the answer to the questions “What is a dative sentence?” or “How can you tell
if a sentence is dative in German?” is simple.
Dative sentences are a myth.
They don’t exist.
They never did exist.
They never will exist.
It isn’t grammatically possible for them to exist.
Dative sentences are a lie.
If you really want to learn how to use the dative case in German, you can find my playlist
about the dative case over here.
If you want to master the dative case in one video, you can find my dative case master
class over here.
Das ist alles für heute.
Danke fürs Zuschauen.
Bis zum nächsten Mal.
Tschüss.