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Re: Cases and Prepositions (amongst others)

From:Robert Hailman <robert@...>
Date:Saturday, June 10, 2000, 1:38
John Cowan wrote:
> > Tom Wier wrote: > > > To cite another example, Greek's 'dative' > > can be used to show possession, a feature which AFAIK does not exist in > > modern German. > > Not in standard written formal German, no. But it is quite common > colloquially: "das Haus ist mir". > > > Sure. But you need to be careful of relexing English prepositional > > uses into your language's case system. The rules governing which > > preposition is required in English are often highly idiomatic. > > One of the reasons why Lojban preposition-analogues are derived from > specific verbs, with a modifier to show which case of the verb is being > used: from the 3-place predicate "finti" = "create" are derived three > preps meaning "created by X", "creating X", and "created with purpose X". > > > There is > > no reason, as far as I can see, why most American English speakers > > say 'in line', while many New Yorkers say 'on line'; both are bending the > > general meaning of the preposition to a very great degree of abstraction. > > Note the lexical difference between the commands "Get in line" (form a line) vs. > "Get on line" (add yourself to an existing line). "Stand on line" is > fairly invariable, though. After 20+ years in N.Y. I conform to this > distinction completely. >
But if you were to say "Get in the line" it would mean that the line already exists. In my ideolect "Get in line" can mean either "form a line" or "join an existing line", it's fairly obvious which one is meant. "Get in the line", however, means "join an existing line" unambiguously, just as "Get in a line" means "form a line", unless, of course, there is more than one line there, in which case you'd have to say "Get in a new line." The articles can often be ommited, unless there already is a line but I'm being told to make a new one. -- Robert