The Balto-Slavic dative complement with the verb ‘to be’

ACTA LINGUISTICA LITHUANICA LI (2004), 45 - 48 The Balto-Slavic dative complement with the verb ‘to be’ WILLIAM R. SCHMALSTIEG Pennsylvania State University It is suggested in this paper that the dative complement with the verb ‘to be’ in Baltic and Slavic infinitival clauses ultimately goes back to the IE dative of purpose also attested in Old Indic and other IE languages. Holvoet (2004: 80 and passim) demonstrates that in such a Latvian sentence as: (1) Lagsim viņu arī šodien būt mūsu viesim. ‘Let us ask him Acc to be our guest DAT today as well’ the dative complement of būt ‘to be’ is etymologically more ancient than the possible use of an instrumental in syntactically similar clauses in Lithuanian (and Slavic). I propose that etymologically this Latvian construction reflects a subtype of the ‘double dative’ or ‘dative of purpose’. This sentence might then be interpreted as originally meaning ‘Let us ask him in order that (so that) he might become our guest today as well’. Let us consider some other examples which Holvoet offers: (John 1:12) ... ēšoxev adroig čovatav TĖxva deco yevēodat is translated into Old Church Slavic as: (2) ...dastvimvvlastv čedomo bžiemb DAT byti (Codex Marianus) "to them gave he power to become the sons of God...” (King James version translation). Note that yevéoda ‘to become’ is translated by OCS byti which thereby retains the IndoEuropean meaning of the root *bhii- ‘to become, to come into existence, to begin to exist’. interpret the OCS construction also as a ‘double dative’ or ‘dative of purpose” and an alternative translation of this might be ‘he gave them power in order that they might become sons of God’. Note also the Old Russian expression: (3) Ona Ze ucase syna svoego byti xristijanu which Holvoet (2004: 80), from whom I have the example, translates as: ‘She, however, taught her son Acc to be a Christian DAT”. I could understand this also as ‘She taught her son, so that he might become a Christian’. The double dative or dative of purpose is well represented in many Indo-European languages and according to Ambrazas (1981: 20-21) is a reflection of the double 46 | WILLIAM R. SCHMALSTIEG dative with verbal abstracts. Haudry (1977: 105) writes: „Le type indrāya patave (‘pour gu Indra boive’) est constitué d'un substantif ordinaire (la plupart du temps, mais non obligatoirement, un nom personnel) et d'un nom verbal (nom d’action ou infinitif); le lien entre le premier et le second est celui d'un sujet a un prédicat: indraya pātave.* Concerning the Old Indic type vrtrāya hdntave ‘pour tuer Vrtra’ Haudry writes (1977: 105—106): „...mēmes constituants, le substantif ordinaire étant quelconque; le lien est celui d'un objet a un verbe transitif... Naturellement, cet exemple peut étre interprété hors contexte selon le type prēcēdent ‘pour que Vrtra tue’: Pexpression est donc ambigue.* Similar grammatical ambiguity exists in Lithuanian. Thus: (4) Jis nupirko liūtą karvēms ēsti formally could mean either: (4a) ‘He bought a lion to eat the cows DAT OF GOAL' or (4b) ‘He bought a lion for the cows DAT SUB; to eat.’ Likewise the sentence (5) Jis nuvedė Jong banginiui ėsti (5a) ‘He brought Jonah to eat the whale DAT OF GOAL’ or (5b) ‘He brought Jonah for the whale DAT suB; to eat’. According to Prof. Vytautas Ambrazas in his letter of 1996-03-19 the ambiguity can only be resolved by context. Now a dative with an infinitive (Lith.) būti, (Latv.) būt, (Slavic) byti denoting ‘to become’ might be understood either as the subject or the complement. The original dative of purpose meaning is illustrated in sentences (1), (2) and (3) above and perhaps also in the further Latvian examples given by Holvoet (2004: 79): (6) kas aiskawe manni kristitam tapt ‘what doth hinder me Acc to be baptized DAT”, which I could understand as ‘what hinders me so that I might be baptized’ and (7) unwinsch pawehleja teem kristiteem tapt eeksch ta Kunga Wahrda ‘and he commanded them DAT to be baptized in the name of the Lord’ which I could interpret as ‘and he commanded that they should be baptized (in order to baptize them) in the name of the Lord’. THE DATIVE COMPLEMENT WITH ‘TO BE’ | 47 At some point the dative spread from the purpose clauses to become what Holvoet (2004: 77-78) terms ‘a syntactic default’ case in such sentences as Latv. (8) Patīkami ir būt rakstniekam ‘It is pleasant to be a writer’ and (9) Valodās viņi centās atrast cits cita vājākās vietas, kas tos piespieda būt uzmanīgiem. ‘In their talk they attempted to discover each other’s weak spots, which compelled them Acc to be careful DAT” Perhaps it is on the basis of just such sentences as (9) which can almost be interpreted as a purpose clause (‘that they might be careful, that they should be careful, in order for them to be careful’) which led to the spread of the etymological dative of purpose beyond its original semantic borders. It should further be remarked that the use of the instrumental in similar constructions in Lithuanian was roundly criticized by Jablonskis. Typically guardians of the language support the retention of earlier norms, so we can assume that Jablonskis is encouraging an older syntactic construction. Piročkinas (1986: 193) gives a number of examples where Jablonskis corrects the instrumental to the dative, e.g.: (10) patariu būti atsargiais INSTR = atsargiems DAT ‘I advise (someone) to be careful’; (11) betstudentams reikia būti ir sveikais INSTR = sveikiems DAT ‘but students must be healthy too’; (12) Kareiviui nedera būti žiauriu INSTR = žiauriam DAT ‘It does not befit a soldier to be cruel’; (13) Didę viltį duoda noras geresniu INSTR tapti = geresniam DAT tapti “The wish to become better gives great hope’. The use of the predicative instrumental in Slavic is apparently not an Indo-European inheritance. Danylenko (2003: 44) quotes A. Potebnja who wrote that the predicative instrumental is one of the most characteristic features of the Slavic languages and is a relatively late phenomenon compared with the use of the second nominative. (Danylenko stresses the fact that Potebnja says that both cases were equal ‘ravnopravny’, not synonymous.) Infact, however, Old Ukrainian texts show the use of the nominative case more frequently. Danylenko quotes from the Hypatian Chronicle: (14) ašče bo bylē perevoznikē NOM SG kyj NOM SG ‘If Kyi had been a ferry-boat operator..”; (15) uJaropolka Zena grēkin(i) Nom sG bė i bjaše byla černiceju INSTR SG ‘Jaropolk’s wife was a Greek and she had been a nun’ (Danylenko 2003: 40). 48 | WILLIAM R. SCHMALSTIEG I am certainly willing to believe that the instrumental here is an innovation, particularly since this function seems to be limited to Balto-Slavic. Danylenko agrees with Potebnja who saw the use of the nominative in predicate position as being more archaic than the use of the instrumental. It seems to me that any syntactic function must have its origin in a semantic function. The original semantic function of the dative of purpose was, however, sometimes lost and the dative became the automatic complement with the verb ‘to be’. Thus Holvoet’s conclusion that the Latvian dative is more original than a Baltic or Slavic instrumental in similar constructions is completely credible. REFERENCES AMBRAZAS, V. 1981: Zur Geschichte einer indoeuropāischen Konstruktion: Dativus cum Infinitivo im Baltischen. Kalbotyra 33 (3), 12-24. JAGič, V., ed., 1960: Codex Marianus glagoliticus, Graz: Institut fir Slavistik der Universitat Graz. DANYLENKO, A. I. 2003: Predykaty, vidminky i diatezy v ukrajinks’kij movi: istoričnyj i typolohičnyj aspekty, Xarkiv: Oko. HAUDRY, J. 1977: L'emploi des cas en vēdigue, Lyon: Editions LHermēs. HorvoET, A. 2004: On the marking of predicate nominals in Baltic, in Baldi, Ph. and Dini, P. U., eds., 2004. Studies in Baltic and Indo-European linguistics in honor of William R. Schmalstieg (Amsterdam Studies in the Theory and History of Linguistic Science. Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 254), Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 75—90. PIROČKINAS, A. 1986: Jono Jablonskio kalbos taisymai, Kaunas: Šviesa. William R. Schmalstieg Gauta 2005 01 11 814 Cornwall Road State College, PA 16803, USA