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Re: English has 4 cases, not 3!

From:Michael Poxon <m.poxon@...>
Date:Saturday, December 29, 2001, 20:49
If you take the broadly-acceptable definition of case (i.e., a
nominal/pronominal morpheme of some sort) then, for the most part, English
doesn't really have cases, and certainly no allative/locative, etc. I'd have
thought to be called a 'case' you'd have to have some sort of
across-the-board feature, which -ward(s) isn't. You can't say "mewards",
"windowwards", "dogwards" or so on. But of course these things are rarely
shut up in neat boxes, and the case (sorry!) that can be made for a
Genitive, say, is very strong.
Mike

Replies

Padraic Brown <agricola@...>
Thomas R. Wier <trwier@...>
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>