Dativus Ethicus in the Balkan Languages

The paper presents a contrastive study of the ethic dative case of the personal pronouns in the languages of the Balkan Sprachbund outlining the similarities between them, but also discussing peculiarities of each language. It aims at analyzing the functioning and the meaning of different pronominal forms in dativus ethicus (1st person singular or plural, 2nd person, 1st + 2nd person of the personal pronouns, reflexive pronoun) found in authentic examples in order to indicate that dativus ethicus is one of the common features of the pronominal systems of the Balkan languages.