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

nicole dobrowolski <fuzzybluemonkeys@...> wrote:
Subject: Re: sorta OT: cases: please help...

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?

...nicole

"The strength of a civilization is not measured by its
ability to
fight wars, but rather by its ability to prevent
them."--Gene Roddenberry
""""""""""""""""""""""""
depends whether you talk about "core cases/roles" or about
"grammatical cases".
with core roles, "student" is an equative. with grammatical
cases, the same equative is expressed with either a
nominative (german), an accusative (latin) or whatever.
grammatical cases depend on the lang. for instance in
correct french genitive is made with the genitive
preposition "de"
("la voiture de mon frère") but in "bad french" it's made
with
the dative "à" ("la voiture à mon frère").
in estonian, the accusative is usually expressed with a
partitive genitive.

Mathias
www.geocities.com/kalatunu/index.htm

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