dativebenefactive

Dative benefactive is a grammatical function in which the dative case marks the beneficiary or person for whom an action is performed. In this use, the dative argument encodes the entity that benefits from the action, rather than the direct recipient of an object or the patient of the action. The concept is often discussed in relation to ditransitive verbs, such as give, buy, or tell, where there is both a primary object and a beneficiary.

Typologically, dative benefactive can be realized in several ways. In languages with productive case systems, the beneficiary may appear as a true dative noun phrase or pronoun. Some languages have a distinct benefactive case or clitic, while others rely on the dative to serve both recipient and benefactive functions. The boundary between benefactive and recipient can be fluid, and in certain constructions the beneficiary overlaps with the indirect object or with experiencer-like meanings.

Examples help illustrate the concept. German: Ich schenke dem Kind ein Spielzeug. Translation: I give a toy to the child, with the child as the beneficiary of the gift. Latin: Donum puero do. Translation: I give a gift to the boy; puero is in the dative, marking the beneficiary. Turkish: Çocuğa bir oyuncak veriyorum. Translation: I am giving a toy to the child; çocuğa marks the beneficiary role.

In linguistic analysis, the dative benefactive is treated as a way to encode for whose benefit an action is performed, often aligning with beneficiary theta-roles or as an indirect object function. The precise realization varies by language, reflecting broader typological patterns in how languages encode benefactive relations.