Ethically Challenged

from http://www.nltk.org/book_1ed/ch08.html

A hazard of learning a language from a book, especially a very old, out-of-print book of a fairly obscure language for which one is grateful to have any book at all, is the great likelihood of encountering a point of grammar that is under-explained with no recourse to correct it.  A case in point is what I experienced blithely reading up this summer on dative cases in Colloquial Rumanian by Grigore Nandris (Routledge, 1945).  Being one of the more recent descendants of Latin, Romanian has retained cases-- nominally 5 of them although the Nominative and Accusative share endings as do Genitive and Dative. But shared endings or not, the uses of each case can be idiosyncratic and to English speakers they can pose a challenge.  Almost as an afterthought in the discussion of uses of the dative (the case of the indirect object), the author presented this tidbit:

Note. — The Pronominal Dative of the first and second

person -is used as an Ethical Dative 

Ethical what?  I confess that my strategy for language acquisition involves engaging with grammar only to the intersection of low effort and optimal osmosis, so this was a completely new one on me. By way of examples, the author provided the following:

• Mi-l apucara de barba și mi fi-l batura mar -  They took him by the beard and beat him to a pulp.

• El prea mi se lauda.  -  He praises himself too much.

(Ethical?!) The grammatical point being illustrated (I think) is the use of the first person pronominal dative - mi ("me")- seemingly out of context, in two sentences about "him".  Seems straightforward enough, right?  No? No! No, it does not!

As quoted by Maria-Magdalena Jianu in a scholarly discussion of Romanian Ethical Dative:

According to [Dicționar de științe ale Limbii (2001) Editura Nemira, Bucureșt], ethical dative is defined as a special utilization of the clitical forms of dative of the personal pronoun, characterized by the loss of any anaphorical function and charged with a special stylistic and pragmatic function. These segments are attached to the verb, for evidencing the emotional participation of the locutor to the action or for rousing the interest of the interlocutor in it.

In short, as frequent consultation with a dictionary will reveal, according to the above it's a basically meaningless and superfluous flourish that serves only to lend an air of immediacy and involvement in the details of a sentence.  A survey of the topic will show that it's a feature (not a bug!) of many languages.

Latin:

Quid mihi Celsus agit? (Hor. Ep. 1.3.15)  Pray, (I wonder) what is Celsus doing? 

Hebrew:

(1) (דן נעלם לי פתאום מהאופק) Dan ne'elam li pit'om me ha ófek
(2) Dan disappeared to-me suddenly from the horizon 'Dan's gone and disappeared on me all of a sudden' 

French:

Paul vous te lui a donné une de ces gifles!
Paul 2P 2S 2S.DAT has given one of these smacks
‘Paul gave him such a smack!’ [Leclère (1976:93)] 

Hungarian(!!!):

Hihetetlen!  Képes és tényleg megnyeri nekem a versenyt!
Unbelievable capable and indeed wins DAT-1SG [to me] the race
It is unbelievable!  He can and will bloody well win the race!

The Australian language, Warlpiri:

Nyuru-nyuru-jarri-mi ka-lu-rla yapa ngajunyangu-ku kurdu-ku karnta-karnta-ngurlu nyampu-rra-ngurlu
Hate (them) people my child women these.
The people hate my son for all his playing around with women.

But naturally, the subtleties of it didn't really come into focus for me until I came across the following examples from regional and colloquial American English:

Kilt him a b’ar when he was only three.

 I nearly stepped on me a dog.

 Here's you a bowl of soup.

“It’s too bad we don’t have any of those hellebores”, I say. “We could drop them in the Meer and poison us some fish.” (Ayelet Waldman (2006), Love and Other Impossible Pursuits, p. 224, set in New York)

We ought to kill us a male chauvinist.

a. I love me some X: 636,000 vs. I hate me some X: 516 (Dr. Phil, Yankees, exams, emo) [I just love me some X (see §3 above) : 867 vs. I just hate me some X: 0]
b. She loves her some X: 630 (grapefruit, sparkly dance boys, Ozzy, chocolate, jesus, Halloween) vs. She hates her some: 5 (J. Lo, Mao, Patriots)
c. I want me some X: 34,900 (fonts, Krispy Kremes, candy, monitors,...)
d. I saw me some X: 488,000 (relating to entertainment, fun, goal attained, etc.)
e. I found me some X: 346,000 (inspiration, happiness, friends) vs. I lost me some: 8370 (many of the form I lost me some weight)

So basically it's cracker speak?  Why didn't he just say that!