Re: OT: sorta OT: cases: please help...
| From: | Tristan Alexander McLeay <anstouh@...> |
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| Date: | Friday, December 7, 2001, 5:15 |
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On Thu, 6 Dec 2001, Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
> And why *are* copulas highly irregular in those languages where they are?
> I'm not completely convinced, offhand, by "common word" status; is there
> some other or additional underlying reason, or is it all buried in the
> mists of time? :-) Anyone?
In English, it's because `to be' is a merger of three different verbs,
_béan_, _weran_ and something else that I've forgotten (I think, I could
be wrong about anything).
> And someone else mentioned (I seem to recall) the colloquial usage in
> English of "it's me" or "that's him" vs. the prescriptivist "it is I"
> and "that is he." Does anyone know the origins of those colloquial
> forms?
I'm presuming it's just because of the whole fact that transative verbs in
English take an object and `to be' is just another verb in English. (My
explination has a big fat `I think' all over it because people refused to
answer my last question to help clarify my understanding of everything.)
Tristan
anstouh@yahoo.com.au
War doesn't prove who's right, just who's left.
- BSD Games' Fortune
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