Editing Dative case (section)

==English==
The [[Old English language]] had a dative case; however, the English case system gradually fell into disuse during the [[Middle English]] period, when the [[Accusative case|accusative]] and dative of pronouns merged into a single [[oblique case]] that was also used with all prepositions. This conflation of case in Middle and Modern English has led most modern grammarians to discard the "accusative" and "dative" labels as obsolete in reference to English, often using the term "objective" for oblique.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://grammar.about.com/od/mo/g/objcaseterm.htm |title=Objective case (grammar) |work=(about) education |access-date=2016-01-29 |archive-date=2016-03-26 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160326214054/http://grammar.about.com/od/mo/g/objcaseterm.htm |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/personal-pronoun#personal-pronoun__5 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130630085208/http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/personal-pronoun#personal-pronoun__5 |url-status=dead |archive-date=June 30, 2013 |title=Personal pronoun |work=Oxford Dictionaries |publisher=Oxford University Press |access-date=2016-01-29 }}</ref>

===Set expressions===
The dative case is rare in modern English usage, but it can be argued that it survives in a few set expressions. One example is the word "methinks", with the meaning "it seems to me". It survives in this fixed form from Old English (having undergone, however, phonetic changes with the rest of the language), in which it was constructed as "[it]" + "me" (the dative case of the personal pronoun) + "thinks" (i.e., "seems", < Old English þyncan, "to seem", a verb closely related to the verb þencan, "to think", but distinct from it in Old English; later it merged with "think" and lost this meaning).

===Relic pronouns===
The modern objective case pronoun [[whom]] is derived from the dative case in Old English, specifically the Old English dative pronoun "hwām" (as opposed to the modern subjective "who", which descends from Old English "hwā") – though "whom" ''also'' absorbed the functions of the Old English [[accusative case|accusative]] pronoun "hwone". It is also cognate to the word "''wem''" (the dative form of "''wer''") in German. The OED defines all classical uses of the word "whom" in situations where the indirect object ''is not known''{{clarify|date=September 2016}} – in effect, indicating the anonymity of the indirect object.

Likewise, some of the object forms of personal pronouns are remnants of Old English datives. For example, "him" goes back to the Old English dative ''him'' (accusative was ''hine''), and "her" goes back to the dative ''hire'' (accusative was ''hīe''). These pronouns are not pure datives in modern English; they are also used for functions previously indicated by the accusative.

===Modern English===
The indirect object of the verb may be placed between the verb and the direct object of the verb: "he gave '''me''' a book" or "he wrote '''me''' a poem."

The indirect object may also be expressed using a [[adpositional phrase|prepositional phrase]] using "to": "he gave a book '''to me'''".