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The Latin Dative: Nomenclature and Classification
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Extract
It must have been shortly after I entered college in my middle ̓teens that I first heard of the grammatical doctrine that psychological opposites take the same construction. As a mnemonic, alone, the doctrine is immensely worth while and practically helps with categories like (damnare)(absoluere, meminisse)(obliuisci, cedere)(resistere, similis)(alienus (dissiniilis)—which rouses a literary interest by recalling Thackeray's use of different to as a counter term to equal to, similar to, like to. And, to get back to grammar, for English folk it clarifies prope ab to counter it with procul ab. By the doctrine of opposites we clarify even so elusive a matter as the ‘subjunctive of repudiation’ which I once sought to explain by partial obliquity (Cl. Rev. XI. 344 sq.), not mistaking therein, I am fain to believe, the valuable stylistic note of echo. In this subjunctive I now see a clear opposite to the concessive. It is a survival, on the cold page, of a speech form that owed its meaning to the speaker's mood (⋯ ψυχικ⋯ δι⋯θεσις, the pitch of his voice, all the things that manifest and betray emotion, and so far forth is ‘polemic’ It is often introduced by ut, utne, egone ut, where ut is exclamatory and interrogative at once, and the tone converts the concessive to an anticoncessive, indicating repudiation, disavowal.
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References
page 185 note 1 Here note Irish fri used with pronoun objects, now with verbs of association, and now with verbs of separation.
page 185 note 2 See an interesting series of protesting subjunctives in Seneca, Here, 526 sqq,
page 185 note 3 It is a pity that (ablatiuus) separatiuus has been forsaken as a technical term for ‘ablative of separation.’
page 186 note 1 The illustration might also be used to show how mutat is sometimes ‘gives’ and some andtimes ‘gets,’ sometimes ‘sells’ and sometimes ‘buys’ and incidentally to show how Eng. sells ‘delivers’ is etymologicallj to be correlated with ⋯λεῖν ‘to take.’ The root developed as description of an act of barter, wherein give-and take is a reciprocal act. Observe how French rendre (from Lat. redden) ‘to deliver’ has picked up an n from prendre ( = Lat. prendere) ‘to take’.
page 187 note 1 Two years earlier Arnold in his Forum Latinum (I900) used the term ‘Dative of the Person losing,’ for which he substituted in his Basis Latina (I908) ‘Person Deprived.’ I am glad to know that, quite as early as myself, if not earlier, he had reached the same point of view.
page 187 note 2 Cf. anulos... amicae tuae inuolasti, Petronius, 58, I0.
page 187 note 3 The wide range of these verbs may be indicated by noting absterrere alicui (Lucretius IV. I064, I233), abstinere alicui (Livy I. 1, 1); cf Lucretius II. I003, coetum dissipat ottis ‘scat ters coherence from them;’ IV. 378, nigrasque sibi abluit umbras.
page 188 note 1 Here note the contrast between sustinet and our upholds: su(b)s- belongs more particularly to the subject, and up- to the object.
page 188 note 2 This example aids me to comprehend Lucretius III. I29, uentus uitalis... nobis mori bundos deserit artus, as a sort of loose construction which may be rendered ‘the breath of life fails us–our dying members.’
page 189 note 1 The optional omission of the locative ending i- gives it much the look of being a separate (therefore separable) deictic particle. In the diphthong of the personal dative ending we may be reckoning with an element originally emotional. [The diphthongizing effect of emotion on vowels in Sicily (see Schneegans ap. Wechssler Lautges., p. 181 fn. 2) is no assumption.]
page 190 note 1 I mention Deecke, honoris causa, as the representative of scholars before and since who cham-pion the localistic theory.
page 190 note 2 2 Note also on Pompeian amphorae the dative of the consignee (Man-Kelsey's Pompeii2, p. 507)
page 191 note 1 Structurally neci might be an infinitive, [see AJP. 3I, p. 408, § 17, a], and the example is valid for § 23, below.
page 191 note 2 With relations reversed, Romanis ad muros mantis tendebant is normal Latin, but I take it that ad muros is an ethnic replacement (see § 28) of a proethnic type of goal dative still preserved in muris adequitare (§§27, 29).
page 192 note 1 Also cf. the Homeric infinitive of purpose with dhā. Vedic examples show dhä- ‘facere,’ rather than dä- ‘dare.’ Proethnic usage with the root of dare is beyond question. Note how the examples of §§ 18–20 reveal the development of the goal-dative from the dative with dare.
page 192 note 2 This type of noun is as old as the Rig Veda, cf. I. I4, 1, 
‘unto (the) soma-drinking come’; V. 35, 6, 
… 
‘te uocant praedicaptioni,’ and may be there regarded as infinitival (cf Arnold, KZ. 37, 43I).
page 193 note 1 In such collocations we often render the dative by ‘for,’ and it cannot be questioned that the subdivision of the dative into a ‘to’ and a ‘for’ case is convenient for English speakers, but it is far from certain that the subdivision is justified: thus in mihi mittit munera we have to hesitate between ‘to’ and ‘for’ in our interpre- tation, but we do not know that in the dative the Romans differentiated between ‘to’and ‘for,’ at least before the time of grammatical sophistication. The same remark may be made regarding ad ‘to’ and ‘for.’ In an example like cape tibi hanc [pallam], Men. 202, tibi is plainly an indirect object from the giver's point of view, while from the taker's point of view cape tibi is a ‘middle’ (‘mihi accipiam’).
page 194 note 1 Cf. I have been to town in English.
page 195 note 1 The adjective impia seems to have been chosen to convey the tyrant's reluctance to behold another in his seat even when put there in derision by himself.
page 195 note 2 See note 1 on p. 189.