All Questions
14 questions
0
votes
2
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184
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Why is "I am me" not "I am I"?
In Latin, the case of a noun that follows a link verb is nominative, not accusative.
But in English, why do people say "I am me" not "I am I"? Is it different in English?
- 913
1
vote
2
answers
782
views
Does English have animate/inanimate distinction?
I know we have the "'S" genitive and the "X of Y" but I don't exactly understand the rules of using these even as a native English speaker and I'm unsure if English makes other ...
- 169
6
votes
3
answers
556
views
Why do two English personal pronouns — "you" and "it" — lack an objective case?
Most English person pronouns have an objective case — I/me, we/us, thou/thee, he/him, she/her, they/them, who/whom. But "you" and "it" have no such form. Did they every have one? ...
- 73
0
votes
1
answer
83
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What is case for pronouns in different positions? [closed]
Can we say "the case of subject in a sentence is nominative, the direct object of a verb is accusative, the second object of a ditransitive verb is accusative, the objective of a preposition is ...
user27687
3
votes
2
answers
194
views
Case in English phrase "friend of mine"
In English phrases like
Jesse is a friend of mine/*of me
the case of the word "mine" is not the oblique ("me") which usually occurs with prepositions ("That's a part of me that you don't see too ...
- 2,364
1
vote
1
answer
202
views
"To whom" in pied-piped infinitive relative clauses
In English wh raised from, or in situ in, a direct object or prepositional object, you can almost always use "who" at least as well as "whom",1 and in some cases you can only use "who":
Who/whom did ...
- 2,645
1
vote
2
answers
521
views
Grammatical Case for Noun Phrase in English
Consider the sentence:
John's book is blue.
What is the grammatical case of "book" here? The two obvious choices are nominative or genitive.
Most information online suggests it is nominative, ...
- 171
2
votes
0
answers
202
views
What does CGEL mean by 'instability in the system' in their explanation of case?
Consider the following passage from CGEL (p. 458, boldfaced emphasis mine):
We look first at the contrast between nominative and accusative case, where we find a considerable amount of variation ...
- 497
2
votes
0
answers
82
views
Subjective pronouns in English copulas: gradual loss of objective case, or emphatic construction taking over?
I'm interested in the historical linguistics of constructions like "that's me" versus "this is she" when answering the phone. Searching online led to a Google Books peephole view ...
user12663
-1
votes
2
answers
611
views
Need for English not to have many grammatical cases
In other languages (mainly Romance languages such as: Portuguese and Spanish), we have many grammatical cases such as: abessivo
ablativo,
absolutivo,
acusativo,
adessivo;
English doesn't feature such ...
- 125
0
votes
2
answers
315
views
How is the dative case for help being used here?
Swiss-German has dative and accusative case-marking for its objects.
In the sentence "I gave him the book," "him" must be marked as dative and "the book" must be marked as accusative. It's clear that ...
2
votes
4
answers
512
views
Is word order a method of implementing case in English language
I often read that English retains 'vestigal' case markers, particularly for the genitive, although some argue that 's is a clitic. Pronouns remain the largest source of marked words indicating the ...
- 61
-1
votes
2
answers
1k
views
How do English people understand the grammatical cases? [closed]
In Czech poetry you can say something like this:
"zvukem kulek k tobe promlouvam"
which is "I speak to you with(through) the sound of bullets/shots"./"Mluvim k tobe se(skrz) zvukem(zvuk) kulek."
...
- 456
-1
votes
2
answers
183
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Their class has more singers than (we/us) -- possible syntactical derivations?
Forgive me if this is not the right sort of question to post here, but I was curious as to the derivation of the above sentence. (Apparently the correct choice is 'we').
Their class has more singers ...
user2194