A dative case in English?

[Carol]

Carol earlier:
> > Later, (after a reminder that English is a Germanic and not a
Romance language and that modern English is an analytical as opposed
to an "inflectional" language), Mason defines "case" as "the form in
which a noun or pronoun is used, in order to show the relationship in
which it stands to some other word in the sentence" and adds:
> 
> Geoff:
> To be quite frank, I do not agree with Mason about English. One of
the things which makes English one of the most expressive languages in
the world is the fact it is a mongrel.
> 
> I agree that a large part of English derives from its Anglo-Saxon
Germanic roots but the fact remains that French had a dominating
effect on English linguistic development following the Norman 
Conquest and thus there is a large part of our heritage stemming from
the Romance side. <snip>
> 
Carol responds:
Norman French had two important effects, leveling the inflected
endings (which eliminated the dative/accusative distinction, among
other things and made word order an essential component of grammatical
meaning) and adding new words which in some cases replaced Anglo-Saxon
words and in others coexisted with them. However, the fifteen percent
of Anglo-Saxon words that were retained are the heart of the language
and occur more frequently than even the most basic borrowings. To
quote "A History of the English Language," Baugh and Cable, p. 55--as
opposed to any online source: "Apart from pronouns, prepositions,
conjunctions, auxiliary verbs, and the like, they express fundamental
concepts" (examples, minus the Anglo-Saxon forms, include man, wife,
child, house, meat, grass, leaf, good, high, strong, eat, drink,
sleep, live, and fight).

IOW, the heart of the language is still Germanic, despite all the
borrowings from many sources. A significant number of Latin
borrowings, for example, are either liturgical or scientific.

Carol earlier:  
> > More to the point, the section on case in modern English is
followed by a note beginning, "The endeavor to distinguish a *dative*
and an *accusative* case in modern English is at variance with the
genius [spirit] and history of the language.... 
> 
> > It is unphilosophical to re-introduce distinctions which a
language has ceased to recognise.... As there is but one *form* to
denote both the direct and the indirect object, not only is nothing
gained, but an important piece of linguistic history is obscured by
having two names for it. It is much better to use the common name
*objective*"
> 
> Geoff:
> But there is a dative because any English speaker can recognise the
usage without the use of a pronoun.

Carol:
Can they? Ask any person on the street or any teenager of your
acquaintance if they know what the dative case is and can recognize it
in English. No doubt older people who learned Latin or another
inflected language in school know the term, but how many associate it
with English? The average educated English speaker would, I hope have
heard of the *objective* case and be able with little difficulty to
recognize an *indirect object* (and distinguish it from a direct
object  or an object of a preposition or a subject) whether the
indirect object was in the form of a noun or a pronoun, but a dative
in English? I doubt it very much.

I do agree that most English speakers instinctively use the objective
form for indirect objects--I've never heard anyone say, "Give he the
ball"--as opposed to objects of prepositions, for which they often
mistakenly use the subjective case ("to Bill and I"--yecch!). But it's
not a matter of recognizing the "dative usage." It's a matter of using
the objective form of the pronoun (for nouns, the form isn't altered).
Most English speakers also use *direct* objects correctly without ever
having heard of the accusative case. (I've never heard even a small
child say, "He hit I" (though in the case of a compound direct object,
the child might be confused: "Mommy, he hit Billy and I!")

Anyway, I appeal to Potioncat and anyone else not participating in
this thread. Were you taught in your English classes that English had
an accusative and/or dative case (which happen to have identical
forms)? Or were you taught that personal pronouns in (modern) English
have three cases" nominative or subjective, objective, and possessive?
Or were you simply taught about direct and indirect objects and
objects of prepositions using "me," "him, and "her" instead of "I,"
"he," and "she" without the concept of cases being brought in at all?
Or did your English teachers emphasize vocabulary and literature and
not teach grammar at all?
> 
> Geoff:
> The trouble, as I've already hinted, about the title "objective
case" is that for those of us, like myself,  who have had contact with
Latin and German is that I think in terms of these names. The  title
"objective case" means nothing linguistically to me. My first reaction
is that we are in the subjective/objective area - "What am I supposed
to be thinking about objectively here?" OK, so I've missed the point 
but I stay with the comfort zone of the terminology I was taught.

Carol:
But the same is true for those who learned about the various forms of
objects for which the objective case is used and never learned Latin
or another inflected language for which accusative and dative remain
applicable terms. The inflections are gone, along with the distinction
between accusative and dative (and ablative) in English pronouns, not
to mention nouns, for which nominative/subjective and objective have
now merged. Persistence in antiquated terminology can only confuse the
issue. But what could be simpler than subjective case for the subject
of the sentence and objective case for objects of all sorts, once the
concept of "subject" vs. "object" is mastered? It's just simple logic.

Geoff:
<snip> The use of the phrase
>  "objective case" is not prescriptive and it would appear that CJ
and I are both of the opinion that dative and accusative can retain a
place in the descriptive process.

Carol:
How so, when the difference in form no longer exists? Students who
have taken courses in an inflected language would understand the
concept, but those who know only English will be better served, IMO,
by terminology that matches the *function* of the pronouns (subjects
in subjective case, objects in objective case).

BTW, I should break the habit of using "nominative case" instead of
"subjective case" for the sake of consistency. After all, the same
logic applies, and there's no point in clinging to outdated habits
when I can clearly see the logic of the newer terminology (not all
that new, really). I suppose it's like believing that Pluto is a
planet or calling an Apatasaurus a Brontosaurus. It's what I was
taught; therefore, it must be right! :-)

Carol, who would really like to hear some new voices in this thread,
assuming that it hasn't been passed over with horror and revulsion by
the vast majority of posters!