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Re: Def. of Case WAS: Cases, again

From:Ray Brown <ray.brown@...>
Date:Friday, March 19, 2004, 6:25
On Thursday, March 18, 2004, at 03:27 PM, Matthew Kehrt wrote:
[snip]

> direct object of the verb? (Obviously, in the sentence "I hit him", "him" > is in the accusative as well as being the direct object. Or maybe not: > in American schools at least, this is called the "objective" form of the > pronoun, as it is also used for indirect objects and "objects of > prepositions".)
That is precisely what we were taught in the UK 50 years ago :) By that time we knew about accusative & dative in Latin - we were taught Latin grammar before English grammar in those far off days. It was explained (correctly) that the Old English accusative & dative cases had fused to give a single form for the accusative-dative in our pronouns and that this form is called the 'objective case' in modern English because, as you say, it is used for the direct object of a verb, the indirect object of a verb and the object of a preposition. It's an example of the "collapsing of cases" that Philippe referred to. The Latin ablative was, in fact, the fusion of _three_ different PIE cases: instrumental, locative, ablative. Things worked out differently in the formation of ancient Greek (which had no ablative): - the genitive was formed from an amalgam of the PIE genitive & ablative cases; - the dative was formed from an amalgam of PIE dative, instrumental & locative cases. ========================================================================= =========== On Thursday, March 18, 2004, at 04:47 PM, Henrik Theiling wrote: [snip]
> Languages often use terms like 'locative', 'adessive' for a case if > that seems sensible for the usage of the case, while languages that do > not have such a case, like German or Latin, use such a term for a > semantical role only.
Actually Latin did retain a vestige of the locative case. For the most part, as I said above, it got melted in with that instrumental & the 'real ablative' to give the Classical Latin ablative case. But the names of cities, towns and "small islands"* as well as a few other words such as 'rus' (country[side]), 'uesper' (evening) § retained locative forms. In the singular the endings are: 1st dec. -ae (e.g. Romae = in Rome; Lutetiae = in Paris) 2nd. dec. -i (e.g. Londinii = in London; Corinthi = in Corinth) 3rd. dec. -i (e.g. Carthagini = in Carthage; ruri = in the country; uesperi = in the evening) 4th dec. - one noun only: domi = at home In post-Augustan Latin the ablative, without a preposition, generally replace the earlier distinctive locative, i.e. Carthagine, rure, uespere. All plural city/town nouns used the ablative but without a preposition, e. g. Athenis (in Athens), Gadibus (in Cadiz). Ray =============================================== http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown ray.brown@freeuk.com (home) raymond.brown@kingston-college.ac.uk (work) =============================================== "A mind which thinks at its own expense will always interfere with language." J.G. Hamann, 1760