Re: Subject / Object / ?

Quoting Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>:

> En réponse à Jeffrey Henning :
>
>
> >On Sun, 12 Sep 2004 13:39:16 +0200, Rodlox <Rodlox@...> wrote:
> >
> > > what is the difference between Subjects, Objects, and something that
> might
> >be confused with them?
> >
> >Think about them as describing the role of a noun phrase in relation to the
> >verb.
>
> Is Rodlox American? Is the education system where he lives so bad?
>
> I mean, those are notions I learned in first year of primary school (age 6)
> and used throughout my education in French, English and Spanish classes.
I first heard of the concepts sometime in 4-6th grade. I think that's normal for
Sweden. I do know that very many Swedish adults learnt the concepts in school,
but have since forgotten them.

> This is nothing against Rodlox. He isn't responsible if he wasn't given
> that information before. But I shudder at the kind of education that leaves
> such simple (and necessary if you want to be able to even begin analysing a
> sentence) notions out.
I'm 100% that the majority of my countrimen have never ever grammatically
analyzed a Swedish sentence after leaving school. Why should they?* Indeed, the
_only_ reason _I_ do it is that I happen to be interested in linguistics to a
degree that probably sets me squarely in the 100th percentile.

I was taught English to a conversational level without the use of the concepts
of subject and object. This works _precisely_ because it's a IE language
without cases - pretty much everything in this regard works like in Swedish*. I
do not know Spanish, but am tempted to assume it works the same for someone
coming from English.

I, OTOH, had some help of the concepts in learning German; made it easier to
develop a feel for, you guessed it, when to use accusative as opposed to
nominative case. This is also the chief justification that was given as to why
we should learn it in Swedish class; to make acquisition of foreign languages
easier.

* This is not a rhetorical question. I am genuinely curious as to why you
apparently see a need for primary schools to teach kids how to analyze
sentences in their native language.

** Granted, both make a nom-obl distinction in pronoun, but it's practically
identical in the two languages, and so represents no problem.

                                                        Andreas

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