Alternation ‘external possessor alternation’ (Uncoded)

In Gothic, inalienable possessors can be encoded by genitive modifiers holding a syntactic dependency relation with the possessum (Mt 8:15). With other verbs from our sample, an alternative construction is allowed, in which the inalienable possessor is expressed by a syntactically independent noun phrase inflected in the dative case, traditionally called dativus sympatheticus, ‘dative of affection’ or ‘dative of interest’ (Miller 2019: 144-146; Luraghi 2020). We also group under this alternation cases in which the possessor is encoded by a PP with in+dative, maybe indicating a goal.