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Re: Viko Notes

From:Thomas R. Wier <trwier@...>
Date:Tuesday, June 25, 2002, 21:36
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. ==================================================================== 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. ===================================================================== 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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Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>