Re: Viko Notes
| From: | Thomas R. Wier <trwier@...> | 
|---|
| Date: | Tuesday, June 25, 2002, 21:36 | 
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Quoting Eli Ewing <CelticSlim@...>:
> Nik said:
> >> Classical Arabic uses the accusative for the "object" of "to be".
>
> >... as do almost all varieties and registers of English.
>
> Really?  I had that beaten (beat? there's that -en again...) out of me at a
> young age. :P
Yes. Almost everyone nowadays says "It's me".  Using the
nominative case, as in "It's I", "That would be we", sounds
horribly pretensious.
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Christian Thalmann slabronten:
> > > Classical Arabic uses the accusative for the "object" of "to be".
> >
> > ... as do almost all varieties and registers of English.
>
> Ah?  I didn't know that English had an accusativen casen.  =P
Yes.  In the pronouns, a case system is still extant, although it
behaves very differently from classical case systems like Latin or
Greek, and is in a state of flux.  It's still ungrammatical to say
*"Me see that man" or *"He sees I", and therefore case is still a
relevant notion in English.
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Thomas Wier          "...koruphàs hetéras hetére:isi prosápto:n /
Dept. of Linguistics  mú:tho:n mè: teléein atrapòn mían..."
University of Chicago "To join together diverse peaks of thought /
1010 E. 59th Street   and not complete one road that has no turn"
Chicago, IL 60637     Empedocles, _On Nature_, on speculative thinkers
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