"I'm gonna get me a dog"

[Ruth Berman]

the term "ethical dative" is familiar to me from a paper from way back
in the 1970s on French, and I adopted it in discussing various kinds of
datives in Hebrew, too, in the following paper, where you can find the
full reference to the French study

Ruth Berman.  Dative marking of the affectee role. Hebrew Annual Review,
6, 35-59.    Revised from: Dative marking of the benefactee/malefactee
in Modern Hebrew., 1982
M.I.T. Working Papers in Linguistics, 3, 150-179, 1981]



Ruth Berman
Tel Aviv University

Stahlke, Herbert F.W. wrote:

>I'm interested that you use the term "ethical dative" for this.  It's a term I also used when I suggested this analysis on the other list that Johanna and I discussed this on.  I learned the term from Greek and Latin studies, but it doesn't show up in English studies much.  There is one footnote on it in the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language.
>
>Herb Stahlke
>
>============
>
>I'm not a native speaker of English, so maybe I should be reluctant, but I
>do know that I own an album by a contemporary American songwriter on which
>the following line can be heard:
>
>"I went outside and I smoked myself a J "
>
>What is more, I also have an album by some other American songwriter  that
>has a song with the line:
>
>"I had me a girl in Minnesota/ She was only fillin'  her  quota"
>
>Both albums sold over three million copies, and I am not aware that any
>buyer has ever complained about bad English. So one thing I think should be
>clear: these what i would call "ethical  datives" are a real phenomenon of
>at least American English.
>
>
>
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