Re: English has 4 cases, not 3!

Am 25.12.01, jogloran yscrifef:

> Joe Hill <joe@W...> wrote:
>> Accusative - Pronouns- 'Me'
>> Nominative - Pronouns- 'I'
>> Genitive - 'House's'
>> Allative - 'Homewards'
>
>> It may be old news, but I found it interesting.
Where did you get allative!? Anyway, to me "homewards" is
an adverb (specifically, adverbial genitive).

I would make the declension like this:

NOM house       The HOUSE sits on the corner of Gleam and Short.
GEN house's     That HOUSE'S occupants are away.
DAT house       Give the HOUSE a coat of paint!
ACC house       We bought the old HOUSE in The Lane.

> Hmm, English doesn't really have cases; the accusative marking in
> pronouns is just a part of the old declension system that refused to
> fall off.
All depends on how you look at it. I can certainly see the
POV where there are no cases. On the other hand, certain
usages point to the old four Germanic case system, but
without endings.

> If you consider English suffixes like -wards as case suffixes, I'm
> sure there are many other such examples, but I can't think of any,
> as ... uh ... it's yes! it's the night after Christmas day and I
> can't think properly. That will do.
I suppose there's no reason why one can't come up with
a new case system for English along those lines!

Padraic.
--
Bethes gwaz vaz ha leal.