Although I'm a native English speaker, I've often struggled to understand English grammar, especially its morphosyntatical elements. I've done some reading on nominative-accusative as well as ergative-absolutive cases and I just don't get it.

Can someone who's better at linguistics explain this to me?

I understand that a sentence has a Subject, a Verb, and an Object. (John sees fish) I understand that a verb can be transitive, in that it demands both subject and object, or intransitive, in that it won't accept an object.

For example, 'to see' is transitive in that John (the subject) has to see something (the direct object), he can't 'just see.' On the other hand, 'to sleep' is intransitive in that John can 'just sleep' but he can't sleep a direct object.

1a: John sees fish.

1b: John sees.

2a: John sleeps fish

2b: John sleeps.

Therefore, 1a and 2b are right. 2a is never right and 1b is only right if you want to interpret it as actually saying, "John does see."

 

As I understand it, nominative-accusative case is when a language 'marks' the direct object of a transitive verb. So, if my mark was '-do' then I could say:

1. John sees fish.

2. John fish-do sees.

3. Fish-do sees John.

4. Sees fish-do John.

And all of them would mean the same thing. Word order doesn't matter now as no matter where I scatter the word fish the -do tells me what its function in the sentence is.

 

My problem (took me long enough, didn't it?) is that English is described as having a vestigial normative-accusative case in its use of pronouns and passive voice but I don't see it. Can someone explain how normative-accusative applies to the English language?  

>> My problem (took me long enough, didn't it?) is that English is described as having a vestigial normative-accusative case in its use of pronouns and passive voice but I don't see it. Can someone explain how normative-accusative applies to the English language?   <<

I think they're just trying to say that although English doesn't inflect (change the form of) regular nouns in the nominative and accusative case, like for example, Greek or Latin, it still does with pronouns.

For example: in Latin the sentence "The boy loves the girl" would be: "Puer puellam amat"
Puer = boy.  Nominative case (in the accusative case it would be "puerum")
Puellam = girl.  Accusative case.  (Direct object).  (in the nominative case it would be "puella")

But to say, "The girl loves the boy" would be "Puerum puella amat".

Notice that it was not necessary to change the order of the words in Latin, because it was clear who was the subject and who was the object, based on the *form* of the word.  The nominative form looks and sounds different from the accusative form (w/a few exceptions) in Latin.

The same was true for Old English.  For example, the word for "name" in Old English (e.g. how English was spoken 1000 years ago) was "nama".  In the accusative, it was "naman".  So, English use to change the form of the word to show how it was used in a sentence.

Modern English generally doesn't have many cases any more.  For regular nouns there are only two.  One case that functions as the nominative, accusative, and dative, and the other case functions as the genitive.

Thus: the word thing:

Standard case: thing    things
Genetive case: thing's    things'

The appostrophe s comes from Middle English -es, thus the apostrophe means that the "e" was left out.

But...English still shows a clear distinction with pronouns in the nominative and the accusative/dative

Thus:
Nominative: He
Accusative/Dative: Him
Genitive: His

the word "you" use to also have a distinction:  the nominative case was "ye", and the accusative was "you".  The genitive is still "your".  The first person sg. pronoun still retains the distinction: I vs me vs my.  So in essence, by saying "you are good" is the equivalent of saying "Me am good" because "ye" used to be used as the subject: thus "ye are good."

That's why we have a "vestige" of a nominative-accusative/dative distinction left over.

M. Caliban wrote:

Can someone explain how normative-accusative applies to the English language?

Hello MC

"Normative-accusative" looks like a typo for "nominative-accusative" – as here, for instance:

http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:K-McTc_EmBUJ:www.shakespeare.uk.net/journal/1_4/senf1_4.html+%22normative-accusative%22&hl=en&gl=uk&ct=clnk&cd=2

MrP