🚀 go-pugleaf

*Blush*!  A thank-you to Margaret Mikulska for picking up on the errors
I made in would-be valid examples of Polish constructions.  Seems like 
the cautious motto from <SCHILLER.92Jul31145633@tira.uchicago.edu>:
>
> My preference is to use unelicidated data, which I collect during
> casual encounters with native speakers, prefereably monolinguals.
>
is highly appropriate; my samples violated both the "monolingual" and
"unforced" criteria.  It's all too easy to construct something
plausible-sounding in what for me is now a secondary language: hence the
pointer to soc.culture.polish, and my gratitude for Margaret Mikulska's
corrections.

Another dat.+infinitive example occurs in the Polish with the
obligation-modal "wypadac", which renders a sense of "ought" which I
would translate as "to be (socially) fitting".  For example:

    Wypada mi odpowiedziec Malgosi      I ought to answer Malgosia
           1st-sing-DAT    Malgosia-DAT

    Wypada nam podziekowac jej za wyjasnienia    We ought to thank her
           1st-plur-DAT    3rd-sing-fem-DAT      for the explanations

(Marginally more natural word order would be "Wypada nam jej podziekowac
za wyjasnenia".  Since here BOTH pronouns are in the dative (komu/czemu),
changing to "Wypada jej nam podziekowac" indeed changes the roles to mean
"She ought to thank us.")  In both this case and the earlier "Czas nam
jechac" example, there are English renderings which suggest the dative case:
"Czas nam jechac" as "Time for us to go", and "Wypada nam jej podziekowac"
as "It is seemly for us to thank her".

Awaiting further corrections - Stefek