Dativ, Bindung und Diathese

In its versatilility the German dative is a poorly understood area of grammatical research. This study develops the first unified and explicitly formal theory of the free dative voice in the German language. The central argument is that every free dative functions as an antecedent of a reflexive diathesis. Traditional dative types include the possessive dative, the dativus (in)commode, and the dativus iudicantis.