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

Re: About the meaning of "where"

Anonymous — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 20:18:18 GMT

Oh, thanks a lot!

khoff
By the way, I'm not sure that "accusative case" describes what you're asking -- but I don't know what I would call it.

You are right. That's I just forgot that using of accusative case is different in different languages. InÂ slavic languages and Esperanto location (Ð³Ð´Ðµ = where) is a nominative case, destination (ÐºÑÐ´Ð°=whither) is an accusative case. Maybe it is so in some other european languages, I don't know exactly.

khoff
As for "where do you fly," context would usually make the meaning clear. And it seems to mean that when indicating destination, we would usually use "flying." Here are some examples:

In addition I would like to know, is every verb of movement concerned with tense this way?

Re: forms of "be"

Mister Micawber — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 05:51:11 GMT

The uses of be are numerous, Sunilghai:

âverb (used without object)

1.	to exist or live: Shakespeare's âTo be or not to beâ is the ultimate question.

2.	to take place; happen; occur: The wedding was last week.

3.	to occupy a place or position: The book is on the table.

4.	to continue or remain as before: Let things be.

5.	to belong; attend; befall: May good fortune be with you.

6.	(used as a copula to connect the subject with its predicate adjective, or predicate nominative, in order to describe, identify, or amplify the subject): Martha is tall. John is president. This is she.

7.	(used as a copula to introduce or form interrogative or imperative sentences): Is that right? Be quiet! Don't be facetious.

âauxiliary verb

8.	(used with the present participle of another verb to form the progressive tense): I am waiting.

9.	(used with the present participle or infinitive of the principal verb to indicate future action): She is visiting there next week. He is to see me today.

10.

(used with the past participle of another verb to form the passive voice): The date was fixed. It must be done.

11.

(used in archaic or literary constructions with some intransitive verbs to form the perfect tense): He is come. Agamemnon to the wars is gone.

Re: Surface/Deep Structure

Randy_Tam — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 10:26:14 GMT

Consider Case Theory (you using the S / D Structure distinction), given VP internal subject hypothesis.

VP[DP[He] V'[V[drive] DP[a car]]]

Case theory mandates that the Subject be assigned Nominative, and the Object Accusative. Thus, Operation Move comes into play:

AgrS P[Spec[t DP[He]] VP[ V'[V[drive] DP[a car]]]

(omitting TP operation):

AgrS P[Spec[t DP[He]] TP[Spec[3rd sing, present] T'[T[t2 drives] AgrO P [Spec [sing] AgrO' [AgrO[DP[t3 a car]] VP[t1 V'[t2 t3]]]]]

Therefore, due to the syntactic requirements that the lexicon imposes (DP singularity, Case, VP Tenses, etc.), everything originally in the VP is moved out of it, leaving only traces behind. Thus DS is altered as syntactic complexity increases.

Hope this helps.

Re: "I" or "Me" After "Be"

CalifJim — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 19:54:16 GMT

Yes, indeed. According to the Latin-based grammatical rules that many English grammarians have accepted for years (as if English were Latin!), any tense of BE used as a linking verb produces a situation in which both the subject and the complement, i.e., the elements on both sides of the linking verb, are marked with the nominative case. The idea was that if it was good enough for Latin, it's good enough for English. According to the "Latin-English" theory, the addition of modifying phrases or clauses does not override the basic fact of nominative case marking.

[The person (who is selected)] = [I / he / she]
[The ones (whom you select as the very best and most knowledgeable authority on how to play tiddly-winks)] = [ we / they].

where = can be replaced by any tense of BE, including such complex ones as might have been, had been, will not have been, will be, ...

The folly of the original Latin-based rule is easily seen in such monstrosities* as

-- I wonder who the scapegoats will be when the company goes broke?
-- I hope it won't be we. / I hope the scapegoats won't be we. / I hope and pray it will be they.

-- Who stole the tarts?
-- It wasn't we. / If it was we, we didn't do it on purpose. / It might well have been we or they; I don't know. / The people involved in stealing tarts could not possibly have been we, but it certainly could have been they.

-- There's someone at the door. Could it be Elena and Jim?
-- Yes. That'll be they. It has always been she and he at this hour of the day.

*Well, they're monstrosities to my ear, anyway!

CJ

Re: Who or Whom?

CalifJim — Sun, 04 Jun 2006 07:54:40 GMT

The positions before and after a form of to be are both nominative case positions. (who, she, he, etc.).
The correct forms therefore never include whom in these structures.

Who is it?
Who is the president?
Who can that be?
Who might that be?
Who will be there?
Who might be in the kitchen?
Who could he be?
Who is she?

The modern convention is, however, to use the object form after the verb to be (never before it), even if this is technically a nominative case position.

That is (him, her, them, etc.).
It is (him, her, them, etc.).

Who is a question word which always ends up before the verb, so is never in a position to be a candidate for the modern convention of subsituting an object form after to be. (I suppose, however, that the rarely occurring question pattern It is who? might possibly be cast as It is whom?, but the intense dislike of whom by many speakers argues against it.)

CJ

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: Shall and Will

Ikia — Sat, 10 Dec 2005 13:58:06 GMT

Your post implies that Americans have not learned to distinguish between the future tense and the emphatic future tense. It's not bogus that the English language has a simple future tense and an emphatic future tense, is it?

Ikia

I wrote the above post in response to CJ's post, not any other posts that followed it. CJ also thinks that whom is just about gone in the US. Is that true? Will the English language no longer distinguish between nominative and objective cases of pronouns that are difficult to use?

I know grammar is a report on "useage," how people use the language, but we need to be careful here that we don't throw out the baby with the bath water, don't you think? Most Americans I speak with use "whom" all the time.

Ikia

Re: How to use i.e. /e.g./ for example /and so on

Jussive — Sat, 19 Nov 2005 17:47:52 GMT

CalifJim wrote:
If a student points to some construction and asks me if it's the subjunctive or not, I can't reply, 'No, it's a monkey!'

Now there you are wrong! You are the teacher and can say any dang thing you want!
In fact a smart retort like that might go a long way toward making your students realize that knowing the correct terminology for this or that word or phrase is not at all the same as gaining competence in the use of English.

It rather depends on whether you want your students to be able to express themselves naturally in the real world, or whether the important thing is for them to pass tests in which they correctly identify word groupings as "noun phrase", "progressive tense", "gerund", "possessive adjective", "pronoun in the nominative case", and other such lingo of no use to them once they walk out the classroom door. It's quite amazing the number of students who know the word "nominative" but draw a blank on "lease a car" or "repair the light fixture". It is as if we were preparing them to live their entire lives in the English classroom.

Of course, if you are making your living in an academic institution where all those things are regarded as marks of competence in English, then you really have to concentrate on the lingo, like it or not, I suppose. If so, my condolences!

CJ

I completely agree with you bar a couple of things, CJ:

These technicalities are good for diagnostic reasons. It doesn't help anyone in the fluid process of speaking English, but if there is something wrong then it's easier if there's a technical understanding of grammar and the termonolgy involved so that the teacher can pinpoint the problem quickly. Also, I think, some particular and detailed aspect of any subject may be unnecessary and seem obsessive to some, however, to others it may play an important role to their overall understanding of that subject. It really does depend on how you've put the pieces together in your own mind as to whether one particular piece holds more or less value for you in your understanding of the subject.

As you indicated, though, the students have to pass exams, and I have been taught and am supposed to teach the language in this way, whether I like it or not. Personally, I'd rather just give the grammar where and when I think it's needed and not base their whole learning experience on it.

One last thing, I appreciate that sometimes and in some sense, termonology is just that, and you may as well call some things 'monkey', however, termonology also categorises important functions, elements and differences. For example, I get the sense that there IS a good reason why grammar books tend not to categorise the non-past and modals used hypothetically as 'the subjunctive'.

...but anyway, that's for:

http://www.englishforums.com/English/CoupleQuestionsAboutSubjunctive-Hypotheticals/bpkbn/Post.htm

Jussive

Re: How to use i.e. /e.g./ for example /and so on

CalifJim — Sat, 19 Nov 2005 04:43:11 GMT

If a student points to some construction and asks me if it's the subjunctive or not, I can't reply, 'No, it's a monkey!'

Now there you are wrong! You are the teacher and can say any dang thing you want!
In fact a smart retort like that might go a long way toward making your students realize that knowing the correct terminology for this or that word or phrase is not at all the same as gaining competence in the use of English.

It rather depends on whether you want your students to be able to express themselves naturally in the real world, or whether the important thing is for them to pass tests in which they correctly identify word groupings as "noun phrase", "progressive tense", "gerund", "possessive adjective", "pronoun in the nominative case", and other such lingo of no use to them once they walk out the classroom door. It's quite amazing the number of students who know the word "nominative" but draw a blank on "lease a car" or "repair the light fixture". It is as if we were preparing them to live their entire lives in the English classroom.

Of course, if you are making your living in an academic institution where all those things are regarded as marks of competence in English, then you really have to concentrate on the lingo, like it or not, I suppose. If so, my condolences!

CJ

Re: Correct the sentences

CalifJim — Sat, 25 Sep 2004 06:55:05 GMT

"I like to read adventure stories" is the correct choice.
"adventurous" applies to people, not to abstract nouns like "story".
My brother is very adventurous. OK
This novel is very adventurous. Not OK.

___________________

"Have you found out where you were born?" is correct.
The question asks if knowledge about a certain place has been discovered. The place asked about is 'where you were born'. The past tense is correct. We do not want to ask about 'where you will be born', for example. That would not make sense.

The mix of tenses is not different from what is seen in sentences such as:

I know where I was born.
One day I will find out where you hid the money.
I believe that Susan was rude to John yesterday.
Tomorrow we will know who won the election.

__________________

"You can find him either at or outside the station" is correct.
"You can find him either at the station or outside the station" is also correct but is much longer than necessary.

("hims" is not a word.)

__________________

In "What is your name?" "what" is the subject. (There is no object in this sentence. "your name" is a predicate nominative, not an object.)

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

Re: About the meaning of &quot;where&quot;

Re: forms of "be"

Re: Surface/Deep Structure

Re: "I" or "Me" After "Be"

Re: Who or Whom?

Re: Inferior dialects?

Re: Shall and Will

Re: How to use i.e. /e.g./ for example /and so on

Re: How to use i.e. /e.g./ for example /and so on

Re: Correct the sentences

Re: About the meaning of "where"