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

| -----Original Message-----
| From: David Peterson
| Subject: Re: sorta OT: cases: please help...
|
| | In a message dated 12/5/01 3:25:12 PM, faceloran@JUNO.COM writes:
| | >case, but the next example is: 'i am a student'... huh? what?
| | >wouldn't both 'i' and 'student' be nominative?
| |
| | You are a student, but *you* are doing the action--being--and
| | *student* is receiving it. Whatever does the action is nominative,
| | and whatever receives it is accusative. >>
|
|     That's a fine way of explaining why "student" is in the
| accusative and "I" is in the nominative in the sentence "I am
| a student".  Wonderful. So now explain why "student" is in the
| instrumental, not in the accusative or nominative, which was
| the original question, O greater understander of languages.
| -David

   I'll take a wild stab. (And please forgive my spelling. MS Word isn't
working. Ooh, big surprise. And I hope I lined up the quotes right.)
   "Am" is a verb indicating manifesting or attaining a state of existence.
"I am blushing" means "I am actively manifesting the action of blushing."
   "Student" is a social construct, a template of sorts. It's a collection
of qualities (in school, studying [supposedly], etc.) against which you
actively contrast and compare your life to help you determine the state of
existence which you are manifesting.
   If you say "I am a [class]", in which [class] is a class of people or
social construct [pauper, widdow, chef, playboy], then use ~use~ that
construct to help define or relay your state of being. The "object" is
intangible, it's a social construct, but you are using it to convey
information.

   Well, that was fun.
       Mike K.