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

Re: Please translate these Latin sentences into English.

Tanit — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 20:49:35 GMT

Hi,

'Victory of the People' can be translated as 'populi victoria' or 'victoria populi' (the position of words is flexible in Latin, since words are inflected).

However, the correct translation depends on a number of factors, such as the way you define 'people' and the position of 'victory' in the sentence.
I've assumed that you posted a fragment sentence; however, both 'populi victoria' or 'victoria populi' would work also when 'victory' is the subject of a sentence. In fact, victoria is in the nominative case and populi in the genitive.

Re: Absolute Nominative Participle Construction

Anonymous — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 09:38:13 GMT

An example would be, 'The regulation included monthly and hourly rates, daily rates having been omitted.' The five-word phrase at the end of this sentence comprises a participle with its own subject or nominative. I forget why it is called 'absolute'. The only book I know that mentions the construction is R.W. Zandvoort's A Handbook of English Grammar. It is an old book, perhaps not widely used in the English-speaking world (Zandvoort was a Dutchman), but I have seen reference to it in mainland Chinese writings about English. A good city library should have the book. I often use the construction translating, and teaching translation, from Chinese to English. The nature of Chinese is such that I find the construction indispensible. I used it without thinking until, one day, one of my Chinese students questioned its validity. That set me thinking. I justified it as an adverbial phrase qualifying the verb in the preceding clause ('included' in the example above). None of the modern grammars I consulted mentioned it, so I was relieved when I encountered Zandvoort's authoritative discussion. Today, another of my Chinese students told me that she was taught the construction when studying for the English Toeffl exam, and advised to use it, if she could, because its use would indicate an intimate knowledge of English in the writer.

Re: Please translate these Latin sentences into English.

Tanit — Tue, 08 May 2007 19:44:23 GMT

Hi,

Your sentences contain many mistakes, both spelling and punctuation ones.

The first sentence is part a Christian prayer (shortened form, I put '...' where parts of the text are missing):

Credo in unum Deum Patrem omnipotentem; factorum coeli et terrae, visibilium omnium et invisibilium ... Crucifixus etiam pro nobis sub Pontio Pilato, passus et sepultus est; et resurrexit tertia die, secundum Scripturas... Et in Spiritum Sanctum, Dominum et vivificantem, qui ex Patre Filioque procedit ...

I believe in one God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible ... was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate. He suffered and was buried, and the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures ... And [we believe] in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceedeth from the Father and the Son ...

This translation is not mine (I only selected the sentences you posted, and changed "We" with "I" because your text reads "credo", 1st person singluar, instead of "credimus", 2nd person plural), but comes from here.

As for your second sentence,

Jackson6612 wrote:

Hominus similis daeus quis chaedit ad Latin.

it's not as famous as the first one; what's more, there are too many mistakes, which make it impossible (for me) to translate it. Could you please check your text? I haven't been studying Latin for many years, but, if my memory serves me correctly, it could be either:

"Homo similis deo qui ..." (homo=man,nominative; deo=God, dative) => It is similar to God a man who ... (this should be the most likely one)

"Homini similis deus qui" (homini=man,dative; deus=God, nominative) => It is similar to man a God who ...

(only assumptions, though!) I cannot go on with the sentence because "chaedit" doesn't exist and I can't imagine what it is supposed to be.

Re: Looking for an accepted grammatical explanation.

Pinenut — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 21:28:25 GMT

Paco2004 wrote:
"The farther you move away from Earth's center, the less the pull of gravity becomes"

This "the" was originally "thy", i.e., the instrumental case of the nominative definite article "the" and was used to mean "by means of". Now this "the" is lexically classed as an adverb and OED's grammarians take it that the first "the" means "by how much" and the second "the" means "by so much"
       "By how much farther you move away from Earth's center, by so much less the pull of gravity becomes."
The oldest use of this construct appeared in King Alfred's translation of Gregory's Regula Pastorialis scripted in 897: "ÃÃ¦t her Ã°y mara wisdom on londe wÃ¦re, Ã°y we ma geÃ°eoda cuÃ°on"

On the other hand, a British grammarian Quirk explains "the â¦ the â¦" in his CGEL as paring subordinators to make up a proportional relative clause similar to "as â¦ so â¦".
       "As you move away from Earth's center farther, so the pull of gravity become less."
Suppose the paired "the"s could be used independently, and suppose
       The pull of gravity becomes less the farther you move away from Earth's center.
be grammatical, then it would be paraphrased like:
       "As you move away from Earth's center farther, the pull of gravity become less."
It makes sense, but sounds somewhat weaker in the sense of proportionality than "the ... the â¦" or "as â¦ so â¦"

paco

I am somewhat satisfied with this explanation. It at least tries to explain the usage of "the" in 'the farther'.

Re: Looking for an accepted grammatical explanation.

paco2004 — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 20:33:09 GMT

"The farther you move away from Earth's center, the less the pull of gravity becomes"

This "the" was originally "thy", i.e., the instrumental case of the nominative definite article "the" and was used to mean "by means of". Now this "the" is lexically classed as an adverb and OED's grammarians take it that the first "the" means "by how much" and the second "the" means "by so much"
       "By how much farther you move away from Earth's center, by so much less the pull of gravity becomes."
The oldest use of this construct appeared in King Alfred's translation of Gregory's Regula Pastorialis scripted in 897: "ÃÃ¦t her Ã°y mara wisdom on londe wÃ¦re, Ã°y we ma geÃ°eoda cuÃ°on"

On the other hand, a British grammarian Quirk explains "the â¦ the â¦" in his CGEL as paring subordinators to make up a proportional relative clause similar to "as â¦ so â¦".
       "As you move away from Earth's center farther, so the pull of gravity become less."
Suppose the paired "the"s could be used independently, and suppose
       The pull of gravity becomes less the farther you move away from Earth's center.
be grammatical, then it would be paraphrased like:
       "As you move away from Earth's center farther, the pull of gravity become less."
It makes sense, but sounds somewhat weaker in the sense of proportionality than "the ... the â¦" or "as â¦ so â¦"

paco

Re: Inferior dialects?

Randy_Tam — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 05:16:07 GMT

MrPedantic wrote:

What are we to make of the fact that adult native speakers often "self-prescriptivise"?

Example:

"Oh, hello, MrP. MissQ was just telling Randy and me â Randy and I â about L1 acquisition."

MrP

I read your question wrong... oops.

Um, I think that does not resemble 'self - prescriptivism' at all, at least according to my definition thereof. It is, nevertheless, an instance showing an L1 speaker having the tendency to correct himself of speech errors. That he generates a nominative, instead of accusative at the objective A - position (tell sbd, that 'sbd' is the 'Object') is inexplicable with UG, except with a more careful examination as to whether, when the speaker was acquiring the language, he was given sufficient evidence as to the fact that English has an explicit accusative 1st person form. If he was not, then he would treat that inflection as a covert one, resembling the invisible case system in Chinese. If I say 'I love him' in Chinese:

(i) ææä»

without regard to the grammaticality of the translation, the clause can be roughly translated as:

(i) I love he

in which the verb is constant (Chinese verbs do not have tense morphology) and the case is covert (ie. no inflectional morphology).

If he constantly generates a nominative at objective A - position, then he has already acquired the setting that English does not have morphological case for the singular 1st person pronoun. It does not, therefore, amount to prescriptivism, but actually the acquisition of a (perhaps new?) variant of English case morphology.

Re: Grammatical Cases and the English Language

Clive — Wed, 23 Nov 2005 06:13:04 GMT

Hi,

How likely might it be that the Dative case got its name from something other than dare? Well, 'give' for Dative seems a pretty plausible theory to me, since you 'give to' someone.

Now I've googled a bit, and there's lots of info availalbe for review. For example:

From http://www.hhhh.org/perseant/libellus/aides/allgre/allgre.338.html

The word casus, case, is a translation of tbe Greek ptwsis, a falling away (from the erect position). The term ptwsis was originally applied to the Oblique Cases (Â§35. g), to mark them as variations from the Nominative, which was called orjh, erect (cÃ¡sus rÃ©ctus) The later name Nominative (cÃ¡sus nÃ³minatÃvus) is from nomino, and means the naming case.

The other case-names (except Ablative) are of Greek origin.

The name Genitive (cÃ¡sus genetÃvus) is a translation of genikh [ptwsis], from genos (class), and refers to the class to which a thing belongs.

Dative (casus dativus, from dÃ³) is translated from dotikh, and means the case of giving. (So this traces the origin back past the Latin into Greek - Clive)

Accusative (accusativus, from accuso) is a mistranslation of aitiatikh, (the case of causing), from aitia, cause, and meant to the Romans the case of accusing. The name Vocative (vocÃ¡tÃvus, from voco) is translated from klhtikh (the case of calling). The name Ablative (ablÃ¡tÃvus, from ablatus, aufero) means taking from. This case the Greek had lost.

Best wishes, Clive

Re: I or me

Usenet — Sat, 01 Nov 2003 19:47:31 GMT

[nq:1]In modern everyday English the form is "If you were me ..." and "If you had been me ..." - ... remarkably stilted and the historical claim that it is grammatically "correct" is dubious, to say the least. Regards, Einde O'Callaghan[/nq]
If I remember correctly, I think the German translation is:

"Als Sie wäre ich, ..."

I think that the German is more logical; why should we using the dative case in our example? Sometimes the dative is used to describe the benefactor of an action, for example, "I gave him a fiver", or laid out flat "I gave a fiver to him". This doesn't seem to be the case with our original hypothetical statement.

However, normal usage says we should use "me" in place of "I". "Hey", I tell my students, I didn't invent this language!

Other languages, like Spanish use the nominative case where English uses the dative. For example,

"Who is it?" "It's me" "¿Quien está?" "Soy Yo" or literally "Am I"

If I ramble on for a bit more... Modern linguists generally agree that English only has the remnants of the germanic case system, as a consequence of the Great Vowel shift that took place in England several centuries ago. If we accept that, then we don't have to pay much attention when people suggest that English has a case system. ;)

Iain