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| Transitivity and valency |
|---|
| Transitivity |
| Intransitive verb Transitive verb Ambitransitive verb |
| Valency |
| Impersonal (Avalent) Intransitive verb (Monovalent) Monotransitive (Divalent) Ditransitive verb (Trivalent) Tritransitive verb (Quadrivalent) |
| Valence increasing |
| Causative Applicative Benefactive Dative shift |
| Valence decreasing |
| Passive Antipassive Impersonal passive |
| Reflexives and reciprocals |
| Reflexive pronoun Reflexive verb Reciprocal construction Reciprocal pronoun |
 Linguistics portal |
Thebenefactive case (abbreviatedBEN, or sometimesB when it is acore argument) is agrammatical case used whereEnglish would use "for", "for the benefit of", or "intended for", e.g. "She opened the doorfor Tom" or "This book isfor Bob". The benefactive case expresses that the referent of the noun it marks receives the benefit of the situation expressed by the clause.
This meaning is often incorporated in adative case. InLatin this type of dative is called thedativus commodi.
An example of a language with a benefactive case isBasque, which has a benefactive case ending in-entzat.Quechua is another example, and the benefactive case ending in Quechua is-paq. Tangkhul-Naga (from theTibeto-Burman group of languages) has the benefactive case marker-wiʋaŋ.
InAymara, the benefactive case is marked with -taki, expressing that the referent of the inflected noun benefits from the situation expressed by the verb, or, when there is no verb, that the noun to which it attaches is a recipient, as in the word below:[1]
khuchi
pig
-naka
-PL
-taki
-BEN
-w(a)
-DECL
khuchi -ja -naka -taki -w(a)
pig -1.POSS -PL -BEN -DECL
'for my pigs'
Benefactive meaning may also be marked on the verb, in a common type ofapplicative voice.
An autobenefactive case or voice marks a case where the agents and the benefactor are one and the same. InRhinelandic colloquial German, one finds expressions like:
(I smoke a cigarette for myself), wheremer (for myself) is optional.
In theColognian language, there is a compulsory autobenefactive for example with the verbbedde (to pray) when it is usedintransitively:
(He is praying).
Similarly, in French one can say, in informal but fully correct language:
(Literally:I (to) myself smoke a cigarette. I (to) myself do a pause.)
Formally, those forms coincide withreflexives in these languages.
A similar construction is also found in colloquial English with a pronoun that is reflexive in function but not form:[2]
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