Re: OT: sorta OT: cases: please help...
| From: | Y.Penzev <isaacp@...> |
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| Date: | Thursday, December 6, 2001, 7:29 |
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Re: nicole dobrowolski on Wednesday, December 05, 2001 11:48 PM
> what about in the "one of us" example? would 'one' or 'us' be
> considered genitive (and what would the other one be?)
It depends on particular language. In general, it's partitive - a way to
shaw a part of smth or of a group. But in many langs, The partitive meaning
is expressed by other _formal_ cases. In Russian it's genetive, smtimes
with a preposition {iz} 'from'. So, 'one of us' is {odin iz nas}, where
{nas} stands in genetive.
> here are some of the examples my polish professor gave us:
> 'i write with a pen'... ok that works 'pen' is in the instrumental
> case, but the next example is: 'i am a student'... huh? what?
> wouldn't both 'i' and 'student' be nominative?
Again it depends. The general situation here is that nominative is mostly
associated with agent / subject (in active voice, certainly), and the word
'student' here plays the role of 'predicative'. Some langs have a special
case for predicatives. It's called 'essive'. Polish uses instrumental for
this purpose... Smthing like {jestem studentem} or i really don't remember
it was so long ago...
Yitzik the Snakie
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