The rise and fall of dative subjects

Indo-European languages show two at first sight unconnected contexts in which an argument in the dative case displays at least some of the properties traditionally associated with subjects. The first type is with a range of what we may call dative-experiencer verbs (DEVs for short): a) Icelandic: batna ‘recover (from an illness)’, lika ‘like’, etc. b) Latin: licet ‘it is permitted’, libet ‘it is pleasing