2.09 · Practice ready Dative Singular 0 of 10 lessons complete
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Dative Singular

Recipient, target, experiencer, age, necessity, and movement toward

form regular masculine, feminine, and neuter dative singular nouns mark recipients and targets after common transfer and communication verbs use dative experiencers in impersonal, liking, age, and necessity constructions use к and core по constructions without treating English 'to' as a complete rule

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Before you start

Prerequisites
Complete Module 2.08 first
Estimated time
50 minutes
Lesson steps
10

Deliberately not taught here

  • Dative pronouns are shown only where a high-frequency construction requires them. Their full paradigm belongs to a pronoun course.
Small steps

What you will learn

  1. The dative meaning network Dative commonly profiles an endpoint in the human or conceptual domain: a recipient, target, experiencer, or entity toward which something is oriented.
  2. Masculine and neuter endings -у and -ю Hard stems normally take -у; soft, -й, and /j/-related stems take -ю.
  3. Feminine, -ия, -ь, and irregular singulars -а and ordinary -я usually become -е; -ия and feminine -ь take -и.
  4. Transfer: recipient plus theme Many transfer verbs combine a dative recipient with an accusative thing transferred.
  5. Communication targets Russian commonly marks the person addressed, called, written to, or shown something with dative.
  6. Common verbs that govern dative Government is lexical; meaning clusters help memory but do not replace a dictionary frame.
  7. Experiencer constructions A person who experiences a state can appear in dative even when English makes that person the subject.
  8. Age, necessity, permission, and possibility Dative marks the person for whom an age, obligation, permission, or possibility holds.
  9. К and core uses of по к marks approach or orientation toward; по has several dative constructions that must be learned by meaning.
  10. Dative singular assessment Choose the dative role and governor, then build the noun form.
Mastery

Ready means you can...

  • form regular masculine, feminine, and neuter dative singular nouns
  • mark recipients and targets after common transfer and communication verbs
  • use dative experiencers in impersonal, liking, age, and necessity constructions
  • use к and core по constructions without treating English 'to' as a complete rule
Next module 2.10 Dative Plural Regular -ам/-ям, plural recipients and experiencers, к/по, and oblique numeral phrases