Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2023, Page 185

b. Skrímslið/skrímslinu er kalt.
monster.the.nom/dat is cold.
‘The monster is cold.’
Examples (1a) and (1b) show an alternation between an affected patient and a
motion theme. When shooting (skjóta) a ball in the accusative, the ball itself does
not move and is the patient of the shot (with an arrow or a bullet for example),
but when shooting a ball in the dative, the ball itself is the motion theme. When
sweeping (sópa) something in the accusative, the object refers to the surface being
swept while sweeping something in the dative refers to the entity that is being
swept away (e.g. dust). Examples (2a) and (2b) show an alternation between a
negatively affected patient and a benefactive (applicative). Scratching (klóra) in
the accusative is interpreted as a (harmful) change-of-state for a patient which
could be either inanimate (e.g. a sofa) or animate (e.g. a person), with no animacy
requirement, whereas dative scratches have (sentient) benefactives. Similarly,
when inanimate entities or body parts and hair are washed (þvo), accusative can
only be used, since the dative implies washing a sentient being. In the case of
(2b), the neuter pronoun in the accusative could therefore refer to hair (neuter
noun) but not a child (also neuter), in which case the dative would be appropriate.
Finally, (3a) and (3b) contain alternations between themes and experiencers (also
applicatives). When using the verb ganga ‘go, walk’, as in (3a), to describe the
course of a study (feminine noun) led by a female researcher, a nominative pro-
noun would point to the course of the study itself but a dative pronoun has an
animacy requirement and therefore points to how the researcher conducting the
study is doing. In (3b), the nominative has no animacy requirement and indicates
that the monster is cold to the touch, without necessarily itself feeling the cold.
The dative, on the other hand, requires a sentient argument and indicates that the
monster feels cold, without it necessarily being cold to the touch. Note that for
subjects, this type of construction can only form an apparent minimal pair when
the subject is in the neuter singular and the agreement on the adjective therefore
is syncretic to the non-agreement present with non-nominative subjects.3
To summarize, the semantic minimal pairs in (1)–(3) show how the dative
can indicate motion (perhaps licensed within a prepositional phrase) or an appli -
cative goal or experiencer meaning, where sentience is required. This is contrast-
ed with nominative subject themes and accusative object patients, but it is impor-
tant to note that dative case marking also appears on arguments which are neither
motion themes nor applicatives. For example, various verbs of destruction and
manner of killing appear with dative objects (such as slátra ‘slaughter’, rústa ‘ruin,
destroy’ (which also appears with the accusative) and splundra ‘shatter’). Other
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3 If a masculine noun such as maður ‘man’ would be used in (3b), the dative subject
construction would contain the adjective in the neuter third person (kalt) while the nomi-
native subject construction would yield gender (and number) agreement and the masculine
form of the adjective (kaldur).