Search results for 'tag:Nominative tag:Genders' matching tags 'Nominative' and 'Genders'

Re: corpus/corpora - ethymology

Anonymous — Sat, 31 May 2008 07:36:41 GMT

It's all to do with gender. Cactus and fungus are masculine nouns of which the proper plural ends in -i. Corpus is actually a neuter noun. Hence, the proper plural (nominative case) ends in -a.

It's 'corpora' rather than 'corpa' because the genitive singular case defines the stem of the noun. The genitive singular case of corpus is 'corporis'.

Study guide.

Matrix4583 — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 02:03:02 GMT

Hey, i'm new here. My name is Tim and I got this forum from a friend of mine. He told me that this might help me with the problem i got. I have a brother that is 16 years old and i'm 23( in the US Army). He needs help with his english. The teacher gave him the study guide, but no answer on it. So i ask him to give the study guide to me and i'll help him with it. Well, since i'm busy soo much on school and my job, it's impossible for me to do this. I was wondering if you have some time and help me with this problem. I really appreciate it. Here's the problem.

Language Art:

A. apostrophe
B. Synonym
C. noun or pronoun
D. quotations mark
E. Adjective
F. verb or verb phrase
G. abbreviation
H. antonyms
I. root word.
J. proper nouns
K. Verb
L. action and linking
M. gerund
N. adverb
O. gender
P. subject
Q. Nomniative, object and possessive
R. Predicate nominative
S. Present, past and future
T. direct object.
U. prepositions
V. appositive
W. Object of a preposition

1.____ The subject of a sentence may be what part of speech?
2.____ States what the subject does, is or has in a sentence.
3.____ Sometimes called the simple predicate
4.____ The main part of a without any affixes.
5.____ Two kinds of a Verb.
6.____ What moddifies noun or pronoun?
7.____ What follow a linking verb or action verb?
8.____ The simple tense of verb.
9.____ Follow a preposition.
10.____ Tells more about another noun.
11.____ Answer "what?" or "whom?"
12.____ who or what the sentences about.
13.____ The three cases of personal pronoun.
14.____ personal pronoun have number, person and what?
15.____ Usually modifies a verb, but can sometimes modify an adjective.
16.____ show relationship between it's object and some other word in a sentence.
17.____ A participle that end in "ing" and functions as a noun.
18.____ needed to form possessive nouns and contractions.
19.____ Capitalized because they are particular person, places, and things.
20.____ A short way of writing a word consisting of some of the letters in the word followed by a period.
21.____ Used to show where the exact word of a speaker begin and end.
22.____ Opposite meaning.
23.____ A word that is similar to another in meaning.

That's it. Hoooha.

Study guide.

Matrix4583 — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 22:08:35 GMT

Re: JTTs point on using I or me.

rhetor — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 22:15:02 GMT

http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/1994_01_24_thenewrepublic.html

Probably no "grammatical error" has received as much scorn as "misuse" of pronoun case inside conjunctions (phrases with two parts joined by [and] or [or]). What teenager has not been corrected for saying [Me and Jennifer are going to the mall]? The standard story is that the object pronoun [me] does not belong in subject position -- no one would say [Me is going to the mall] -- so it should be [Jennifer and I]. People tend to misremember the advice as "When in doubt, say 'so-and-so and I', not 'so-and-so and me'," so they unthinkingly overapply it, resulting in hyper-corrected solecisms like [give Al Gore and I a chance] and the even more despised [between you and I].

But if the person on the street is so good at avoiding [Me is going] and [Give I a break], and even former Rhodes Scholars and Ivy League professors can't seem to avoid [Me and Jennifer are going] and [Give Al and I a chance], might it not be the mavens that misunderstand English grammar, not the speakers?

I doubt it. The ultra elitist snob Pinker might just have to accept the fact that Rhodes Scholars and Ivy League professors simply havenât been taught correct English grammar. As a matter of fact, this has been the case for many years.

The mavens' case about case rests on one assumption: if an entire conjunction phrase has a grammatical feature like subject case, every word inside that phrase has to have that grammatical feature, too. But that is just false.

Whatâs false is Pinkerâs understanding of traditional grammar. His notorious chapter, âThe Language Mavensâ from his book âThe Language Instinctâ is a compendium of errors regarding the assumptions of traditional grammarians.

[Jennifer] is singular; you say [Jennifer is], not [Jennifer are]. The pronoun [She] is singular; you say [She is], not [She are]. But the conjunction [She and Jennifer] is not singular, it's plural; you say [She and Jennifer are], not [She and Jennifer is.] So a conjunction can have a different grammatical number from the pronouns inside it. Why, then, must it have the same grammatical [case] as the pronouns inside it? The answer is that it need not.

There are so many errors in this silly paragraph, itâs hard to know where to begin.

1. Phrases (conjunctive or otherwise) donât have case. A phrase can never be in the nominative, possessive, or objective case.
2. A copulative conjunction like âandâ does not allow one to distribute the meaning of the verb to the individual members. âJack and Jill went up the hillâ does NOT mean âJack went up the hill and Jill went up the hill.â The latter compound sentence may be true, and it may express a similar truth as the former, but it does so in a different way. There is NO distribution of the predicate to the individual members. If there were such a distribution, the verb would be singular. This is easily shown by using an explicitly distributive adjective like âeachâ before the subject terms. In such sentences, we can force the predicate to be applied to the elements of the subject-phrase individually, rather than reckon the elements of the subject-phrase jointly. For example:

âEach leaf and each flower IS proof of Godâs handiwork.â

The distributive adjective âeachâ allows us to apply the predicate (i.e., the verb+all-that-follows-it) to the elements of the subject-phrase individually. The meaning is âEach leaf IS proof of Godâs handiwork, and each flower IS proof of Godâs handiwork.â Notice that if we started with the compound sentence and coalesced it into a simple one, we would NOT change the verb from singular to plural; it remains singular. Conversely, in the sentence âA leaf and a flower ARE proof of Godâs handiwork,â does not mean âA leaf is proof of Godâs handiwork AND a flower is proof of Godâs handiwork.â Both sentences may be true, but they are not interchangeable. The latter expresses two separate thoughts in two separate clauses; the former expresses a single thought: we are asked to consider a leaf and a flower jointly. Obviously, thatâs different from considering them separately..

Subject terms joined by âorâ are distributive: âJack or Jill went up the hillâ means âJack went up the hill or Jill went up the hill.â

A conjunction is just not grammatically equivalent to any of its parts. If John and Marsha met, it does not mean that John met and that Marsha met.

Again, this is usually true for copulative conjunctions like âandâ; it is untrue for disjunctive ones like âor.â Itâs also true to say that âThis is a secret between me and youâ does not mean âThis is a secret between me and this is a secret between you.â

If voters give Clinton and Gore a chance, they are not giving Gore his own chance, added on to the chance they are giving Clinton; they are giving the entire ticket a chance. So just because [Al Gore and I] is an object that requires object case, it does not mean that is an object that requires object case.

First of all, if voters give Gore or Bush a chance, they are giving Gore a chance or they are giving Bush a chance. Second, âAl Gore and Iâ is a phrase, and phrases donât have case, any more than they have person, number, or gender. In the sentence âGive Al Gore and me a chance,â the two object-terms are taken jointly; the direct object of âgiveâ is a compound. They are BOTH object terms and should therefore BOTH be in the objective case. Pinker seems to think that phrases can somehow override the normal syntactic rules governing individual parts of speech; as if a phrase were a kind of âmacro-wordâ that has grammatical veto power over the elements it comprises. This is completely untrue, and it was certainly not the belief of most traditional grammarians in the 18th and 19th centuries.

âJennifer and I are studying grammar.â The subject is a compound; the terms are meant to be taken jointly with ONE predicate (âare studying grammarâ) applying to both. Since both are subjects, both should be in the nominative case. Pinker â like many psychologists and many linguists â is a mystic. He believes that thereâs a separate, invisible entity called a âphraseâ that is in the nominative case, and that this invisible entity is like a container with elements clanking around in it. Those elements, he claims (âJenniferâ and âIâ) need not conform to the case of the invisible container. The invisible container, claims Pinker, has a different case from those of the elements within it. All right. If it has a different case from those of the elements within it, why shouldnât it also have a number from those of the elements within it. The elements within it are plural â there are two of them â but the phrase is a single entity, with one case, performing the function of subject. By the logic of grammar (as Pinker is fond of saying) the phrase âJennifer and Iâ or âMe and Jenniferâ should take a singular verb, not a plural one. We should really be saying âMe and Jennifer is studying grammar.â âMe and Jenniferâ is a single phrase in the nominative case, singular number. Or is Pinker saying that the phrase may have a different case from the elements it comprises, but not a different number? If so, why?

The linguist, Joseph Emonds has analysed the 'Me and Jennifer/Between you and I' phenomenon in great technical detail. He concludes that the language that the mavens want us to speak is not only not English, it is not a possible human language!

Thereâs not single linguist who would actually try to publish an article with constructions like âMe and Noam Chomsky was talking one fine day,â or âThis was a secret theory between Chomsky and I.â

Re: English is a crazy language

pemmican — Thu, 26 Feb 2004 02:54:21 GMT

Deepa, I totally agree with you!

As examples always enlighten a lot, I'll give you some impressions of my mother tongue German:
I have to say that English in many cases is simpler than my native language. You mentioned e.g. the gender of a noun which is usually expressed by the article. In English, there are no genders, everything is "the", while in German you have three genders: der (masculine), die (feminine), das (neuter). With human beings, the grammatical gender usually agrees in the natural gender as 'the man' is 'der Mann', the woman is die Frau and the child, when you don't know whether it is a boy or a girl is das Kind. But - already here you have exceptions as e.g. the word for "girl" is neuter: das MÃ¤dchen even if it's obvious that a girl is female!

According to the gender, also the adjectives have to be inflected:
a good man is in German ein guter Mann
a good woman is eine gute Frau
and a good child is ein gutes Kind.

For all the "simple" nouns you have to learn their genders by heart as there is no rule to cling to when you need to know the noun's gender. If you have a compound word, i.e. a noun that consists of two or more own nouns, e.g. buttercup or sunshine, the word takes over the gender of the last noun -> sun is Sonne in German, feminine: die Sonne, Schein is masculine: der Schein, so sunshine is masculine, too: der Sonnenschein.

Speaking of compound words, German has an incredible ability to form new words out of already existing words. Unlike English, that takes over Latin terms to get new words, e.g. accept, surprise, German forms them this way: accept = annehmen from nehmen =take and an = on => take on; surprise = Ã¼berraschen from Ã¼ber = over and rasch =quick => overquick, etc.
Compound words can be put together out of many single words - they are written as one word then, e.g. "DampfschiffahrtskapitÃ¤nsuniformfarbe" which means "colour of the uniform of a captain of a steamboat". Farbe = colour here is the last word and has the feminine gender, so the whole compound term is feminine: "Die DampfschiffahrtskapitÃ¤nsuniformfarbe".

English, with some very few old exceptions, usually adds an -s to the noun and you have its plural form: dog-dogs, car-cars, tree-trees.
German nouns form their plural in different ways:
adding -(e)n: Frau-Frauen (woman)
adding -s: Auto-Autos (car)
adding -e: Brot-Brote (bread)
adding nothing: Teller-Teller (plate)
umlauting the stem vowel: Vater-VÃ¤ter (father)
umlauting the stem vowel and adding -er: Haus-HÃ¤user (house)
umlauting the stem vowel and adding -e: Sohn-SÃ¶hne (son)
...

Also the cases in German still have their own forms, that means instead of forming a case by taking a preposition and keeping the noun in its actual form, German nouns add endings and in addition, the article changes as well:

------------------------Singular-------Plural
Nominative case --- das Haus-------die HÃ¤user------------the house------the houses
Genitive case--------des Hauses----der HÃ¤user------------of the house---of the houses
Dative case----------dem Haus(e)--den HÃ¤usern-----------to the house---to the houses
Accusative case-----das Haus-------die HÃ¤user-------------the house------the houses

(this is only one paradigm though - other nouns follow a different pattern)

Verbs in German still keep inflecting endings for all the persons, also in past tense, sometimes an umlaut occurs in 2nd and 3rd person singular, eg: tragen (to carry)

Present--------------Past
ich trage-------------ich trug-----------I carry------------I carried
du trÃ¤gst-------------du trugst---------you carry---------you carried
er trÃ¤gt--------------er trug------------he carries---------he carried
wir tragen-----------wir trugen--------we carry----------we carried
ihr tragt-------------ihr trugt-----------you carry---------you carried
sie tragen-----------sie trugen---------they carry--------they carried

As you can see here, there are also two different forms of "you": du and ihr. You have to differenciate between whom you're adressing: If it's only one person, you use 'du', if it's 2 or more people you use 'ihr' - and additionally: If you want to address one or more person who you don't know very well, you have to use the polite form "Sie" - so all in all there are 3 pronouns for English "you".
Of course, also these pronouns have different forms when they are used in the four cases.

Ok, I'll leave it with this now - I don't wanna type a whole Grammar here *hehe*
I hope you can now see that in many parts, Grammar English is a lot easier than in other languages. BUT on the other hand I have to say that there are also things that are easier in German - tenses for example. German e.g. doesn't have progressive tenses and it's also not necessary to use future tense when referring to future happenings, usually everyone uses the present tense instead...

But *blahblah* - I hope this info might have helped you a bit. Comparing languges to each other often opens doors, you haven't seen before and it's usually very helpful to have a closer look also at Grammar of your native language when learning a foreign language.