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

From: "Christopher Wright" <faceloran@...>
> Anyway, grammar is separate from meaning. "Student" in the example defines
> the subject, "I", but "I" am doing something. I am existing as a student. A
> sentence requires a subject (though the subject is occasionally understood
> from the verb and not written / spoken); you can say "I am", but you can't
> say "am student" in English. (You can in many languages because they
> inflect their verbs fully.)
Actually, "pro-drop" as a feature in languages isn't the same as personal
inflection on verbs (although there is, as I understand, a tendency for
languages that personally inflect verbs to be pro-drop because of redundancy
reasons).

> Those languages probably use the same case because the nominative is least
> inflected.
Not necessarily so.  Indo-European languages are (well, 'were' now, mainly)
notable in that the nominative case was inflected; the least inflected form
[o-stems, anyway] was the vocative.  (Yeah, they were talking about Arabic here,
but even so..) ;p

> In a dictionary, you don't find entries listed in the dative or
> genitive or locative or whatever other case.
The 'citation form' isn't always universal anyway.  You can just look at verbs
for this:  do we list under the infinitive (like Spanish, English), first person
present (Latin, Greek), or, oh, third person past (Semitic, I think)?

> >But the discussion began with sentences like "he voted Liberal". What do
> >you make of that, O great understander of language, adjective or adverb? But
> >even though I agree with you about the linking verbs, the opinion of native
> >speakers is always more worth than some prescriptivist grammar.
>
> "Liberal" started as an adjective and grew to encompass people of the mild
> to moderate left-wing, between no political views and socialists. It cannot
> be an adverb. However, there is no noun for it to modify. Therefore, it
> must be the object of a missing preposition.
English's parts of speech are not entirely rigid.  To say something "cannot" be
an adverb takes a lot of effort.  It's especially hard to recognize here because
"Liberal" can't take the adverb ending "-ly"--blocked by the unrelated word
"liberally"--so if it was adverbial, it would be unmarked.

Let's change the party, a moment.

    ?He voted Independent.
    ?He voted independently.

Not the best of examples, but still.

As for it being an object of a preposition, that's not always useable either; if
we're voting for a Liberal, that can work, but suppose we're talking about a
Liberal in parliament voting the party line?  He voted Liberal too, but not in
any nominal sense.

    *Muke!

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