Ways of being a dative across Romance varieties

Abstract

In this article, we argue that the term dative can correspond to objects of a very different linguistic nature, even in typologically close languages. Specifically, in syntactic terms datives can be different from accusatives or identical to them at some point in the derivation; in the latter case, clashes between 3rd person clitics emerge. Our approach, then, argues that clitic incompatibilities are best explained through syntactic tools.