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

En réponse à Christopher Wright <faceloran@...>:

>
> You are a student, but *you* are doing the action--being--and *student*
> is
> receiving it.
Since when "being" is an action? "to be" is a copula, i.e. it links together
two entities by stating that they are identical, or that one is qualified by
the other (so semantically, it's rather the subject which here receives
something): I am a student, here the subject "I" receives a
denomination: "student". That's why in the vast majority of languages in this
kind of sentences both nouns are in the same case (nominative or absolutive,
depending whether it's a nominative-accusative language, or an ergative-
absolutive language).

 Whatever does the action is nominative, and whatever
> receives
> it is accusative.
>
Well, you take things the wrong way around. In those sentences it's the subject
which is defined or qualified, it doesn't do anything. So it's the subject
there which is the receiver.
Besides, there's only one language I know of which happens to use the
accusative as the "object" of a verb "to be". That's Classical Arabic, in
tenses other than present (where there is no need for a copula, and both parts
of the sentences are then in the nominative case). But in Classical Arabic, in
some kinds of sentences (including main clauses) you can mark the subject with
the accusative case! So the only language I know of which behaves the way you
describe it is a rather pathological case.

>
> Hey, I might not know the fancy notation, but I know a lot more about
> the
> workings of language than some of you do.
That's maybe what you think, but I guess you should go back and learn again,
because you're taking many things the wrong way. And we don't like to be
insulted by people who think they know better. Even if some people know less
about languages than you, that doesn't mean you're allowed to insult them like
that!

 I'm fresh into high school;
> I
> haven't had an opportunity to forget.
You rather didn't have the opportunity to learn yet. You've learned only the
prescriptivist grammar that English teachers are still mistakingly using, and
which doesn't have anything to do with what English or other languages actually
are.

 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.
>
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.

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

Reply