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

From:Muke Tever <alrivera@...>
Date:Thursday, December 6, 2001, 13:52
From: "Christopher Wright" <faceloran@...>
> >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? > > 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.
Actually I understand in many (most?) languages both are in the nominative. ("agricola poeta est" ?) The "to be" verb is a copula (linker) and not really an action in itself. Prescriptively, English has it ("It was he") although I think "It was him" is more common.
> Hey, I might not know the fancy notation, but I know a lot more about the > workings of language than some of you do. I'm fresh into high school; I > haven't had an opportunity to forget. For instance, all of you had a > discussion about linking verbs and whether their adjectival objects were > adjectives or adverbs. They're adjectives, by the way, because in most > languages you can remove the copula (isn't that what "to be" is called?) > and still be understood. "The rag bloody" could be understood, even in > English, though it isn't proper; in Chinese (I think), it is proper.
"The customs of your tribe are not laws of nature" -- just because something is grammatically so in one language doesn't necessarily mean it's so in all others. *Muke!