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Chapter I: The Germanic Dative of Comparison
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 April 2026
Extract
All the Germanic languages agree in using the dative inflection to express what comparative grammar has shown to be an IE ablative function of comparison. It is not my intention to treat the broader aspects of the question further than to emphasise the fact that this function is not one that belongs to the genuine IE dative; but it was taken over by the Germanic dative along with other ablative, instrumental, and locative functions when the case inflections that were originally associated with these functions in IE disappeared during the Proto-Germanic period. What we call the Germanic dative case is therefore in function an ablative, an instrumental, ora locative, as well as a dative; and from the very beginning we may see one of the causes for the early disuse of the construction here studied, namely, the ambiguity in the context beside these other dative functions.
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- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Language , Volume 5 , Issue 4-Part2: Language Monograph No. 4: The Germanic Case of Comparison with a Special Study of English , December 1929 , pp. 20 - 30
- Copyright
- Copyright © 1929 Linguistic Society of America
References
page 21 note 1 Compare Oertel and Morris, IE Inflection; Harvard Stud. Class. Phil. 16.63.
page 22 note 1 See The Comparison of Inequality 42-6, for a discussion of this so-called ' blending ' or ' contamination '.
page 22 note 2 That the translators would not have been unanimous in the choice of the dative if they had had no native Germanic construction is shown by the use of other cases in translations made after the dative of comparison had gone out of use. For accusative sporadically, cf. below, IV § 9. For genitive, cf. Behaghel Deutsche Syntax § 403. For instrumental, cf. Delbrück Synkretismus 200.
page 25 note 1 The state of knowledge concerning Icelandic comparison at the present time may be illustrated by the fact that only recently has it been suspected and proved that the particle-construction with en ‘ than ‘ to express inequality has the same semantic basis as that of West Germanic, en being the same word etymologically as the WGermanic þan, þanne. (Cf. A. Kock, Archiv NF 11.340 ff; Ber. Delbrück, Sächs. Akad. Wiss. 36. IV.55 ff. 1919); A. Heusler, Aitisi. Elemb. § 162; Small, Inequality 85 ff.
page 25 note 2 Cf. Falk and Torp, Dansk-Norskens Syntax § 32, Kristiania : Aschehoug 1909. ‘ Dativen er bewaret i folkesproget : vonom meir, betre (oldn. vdnu skjótara) = hurtigere end man ventede’.
page 27 note 1 F. Jónsson, Det Norsk-Islandske Skjaldesprog, Kjøbenhavn, 1901; Udsigt over den Norsk-Islandske Filologis Historie (Academia Universitas Havniensis, 1919); Grammatik for det Islandske Oldsprog, Kjøbenhavn, 1925. H. Falk and A. Torp. Dansk-Norskens Syntax, Kristiania, 1909. A. G. Noreen and E. Schwartz, Svensk Sprak-lära, Lund, 1881. A. G. Noreen, Vart Sprak : Nysvensk Grammatik, Lund, 1903-6; Altisländische und Altnorwegische Grammatik, 3d ed., Halle, 1903; De Nordiske Spraken, 3d ed., Stockholm, 1913. S. F. Wright, Grammar of Landsmaal (Norwegian), Society Scand. Study IV, 1917. J. Lollesgaard, Syntaktische Studier over det ældste danske Skriftsprog, Kjøbenhavn, 1920. H. de βoor, Studien zur alt schwedischen Syntax, Germanistische Abhandlungen, Vol. 55 (1924). V. Guđmundsson, Islandsk Grammatik : Islandsk Nutidssprog, Kjøbenhavn, 1926.
page 29 note 1 The present writer plans to undertake a thorough study of comparison in Icelandic sometime in the near future, unless someone in that particular field shall take up this interesting problem in the meantime.