Re: Cases and Prepositions (amongst others)

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