datiiviline

Datiiviline is a term occasionally used in linguistic discussions to describe the pathway or linkage between a verb and its dative or recipient argument within a clause. The word appears in some descriptive grammars and online grammars as a way to talk about how indirect objects are marked and related to predicates, without committing to a single formal morphology across languages.

In usage, datiiviline refers to the functional line by which a recipient argument is connected to the verb, whether through inflection, clitics, or a prepositional phrase. The concept is often employed in cross-linguistic typology to contrast how different languages encode recipients or beneficiaries compared to direct objects, and to compare with other marked lines such as accusativiline or genitiviline that describe object-marking pathways.

Cross-linguistic variation is common. Some languages express recipients with dedicated dative cases on nouns, others with prepositional phrases or with clitic forms attached to the verb. The specific realization of the dativiline depends on the language’s overall case system and syntactic structure.

Limitations and reception: Datiiviline is not a universally standardized grammatical category and may be used more as a descriptive label in certain grammars or scholarly discussions rather than as a formal typological requirement. As such, its exact definition and scope can vary between sources.

See also: Dative case, Indirect object, Prepositional dative, Case marking.