Re: OT: sorta OT: cases: please help...

On Thu, 6 Dec 2001, Christophe Grandsire wrote:

> En réponse à Christopher Wright <faceloran@...>:
>
> >
> > You are a student, but *you* are doing the action--being--and *student*
> > is
> > receiving it.
>
> Since when "being" is an action?
Well, being is something that you do, so you could argue it is one.

> "to be" is a copula, i.e. it links together two entities by stating
> that they are identical, or that one is qualified by the other (so
> semantically, it's rather the subject which here receives something):
> I am a student, here the subject "I" receives a denomination:
> "student". That's why in the vast majority of languages in this kind
> of sentences both nouns are in the same case (nominative or
> absolutive, depending whether it's a nominative-accusative language,
> or an ergative- absolutive language).
>
<snip>
>
> You rather didn't have the opportunity to learn yet. You've learned only the
> prescriptivist grammar that English teachers are still mistakingly using, and
> which doesn't have anything to do with what English or other languages actually
> are.
Yeah, but it's the prescriptivists who say that the object [assuming
that's a valid term here. If it isn't, what is?*] of the copula is a
subject (`It is he'). But it's the other people... whatever they're
called... who say that the object of the copula is, in a normal person's
usage, an object (`It's him'). In English, of course.

*I get the general idea, but what's a highly complex explination of
subjects and objects and the like, and a way to say the `object' of any
verb, be it copula or the `normal' verb with a valency of two.

Not, of course, that this means that Christophe is wrong in saying that
Christopher Wright seemed a bit self-important or something, whether or
not he intended to.

Tristan

anstouh@yahoo.com.au

War doesn't prove who's right, just who's left.
                       - BSD Games' Fortune