Meanings
nounpersonal dative (plural personal datives)
plural personal datives
- grammarA grammatical construction emphasizing subject involvement, associated with Southern American English, consisting of a pronoun that occurs immediately after a verb and is coreferential with the subject.
There are certain general observations which can be made about this construction, which will be referred to here as the “personal dative,” although its exact distribution is somewhat difficult to pin down. […] Personal datives are restricted to animate referents.
1976 June, Waft Wolfram, Donna Christian, Appalachian Speech, Arlington, Va.: Center for Applied Linguistics, →ISBN, →LCCN, page 122
Cite this entry
APA
personal dative. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/personal%20dative
MLA
“personal dative.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/personal%20dative. Accessed November 2, 2026.
Chicago
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “personal dative,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/personal%20dative.
Source: personal dative on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.