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

Re: years my younger

paco2004 — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 00:31:17 GMT

Hello GG

I feel the English expression "superior to me" comes from a Latin phrase "me superiorem (elder than me)" where "me" is the ablative case of the pronoun for the first person singular but incidentally the same in form as the accusative "me". On the other hand "my superior" might have its root in the translation of the Greek expression "mou presbyterion (elder than me)" where "mou" is genitive.

paco, another grammar geek

Re: the first

paco2004 — Mon, 19 Dec 2005 23:07:09 GMT

Then what about these sentences, paco

What do you mean by "Then what about these sentences, paco?" Do you want to say you donât agree to what I wrote previously? I wrote just what CGEL and my another grammar book are saying. If you don't like to believe them, I donât mind it. What I would like to advise you is you had better understand that not all the sentences you can find online are correct English. There are many pages written in English but authored by non-native speakers. Furthermore, even native speakers made wrong sentences sometimes by mistake, sometimes with some intentions, and sometimes from ignorance. If you want to know correct usage through google, it would be better to narrow down your search to domains like "cnn.com" and "nytimes.com" whose reporters are obliged to be careful in writing, or "Gutenberg. org" in which authorized classics are digitized as e-books.

1- "It did not even enter the minds of most of our philosophers to doubt that the state of nature had existed, even though it is evident from reading the Holy Scriptures that the first man having received enlightenment and precepts directly from God was not himself in that state" (Discourse on Inequality 102-03).

As to the quote #1, I suspect the author might misquote the original text. I believe the original sentence was "that the first man, having received enlightenment and precepts directly from God, was not himself in that state". It is because in another translation of Rousseau's Discourse and Inequality the corresponding sentence is "the first man, once he had received his understanding and precepts directly from God, was not himself in this state"

2- The first man having been taken away to receive careful nursing, the next of my whilom partners was placed in the chair.
5- The first man having been taken away to receive careful nursing, the next of my whilom partners was placed in the chair.

To me, your quotes #2 and #5 look as if they are the same. Am I wrong? Do you feel any difference? Anyway, they are right sentences. "The first man having been taken away to receive careful nursing" here is an adverbial participle called as "participle clause with a subject". It may be paraphrased as "After/while the first man had been taken away to receive careful nursing".

3- Then said Jesus: 'Adam the first man having eaten, by fraud of Satan, the food forbidden of God in paradise, his flesh rebelled against the spirit; whereupon he swore, saying: "By God, I will cut thee!"

This sentence appears in the Gospel of Barnabas. The English version of the gospel was translated in the early 1900's from the Italian version. I believe the translator put an Italian collocation of "the first having eaten" into English word-to-word wise with some unknown intention.

4- As the motion of the will is not continuous there is nothing against the first man having consented to grace even in the first moment of his existence.

This "having consented to grace" is not a modifier of the first man. It is a construct called as "accusative with gerund". This means not "(against) the first man who had consented to grace" but "(against) the fact that the first man consented to grace".

6- That year, Pope Pius XII - the first man having visited the United States of America and having become pope - vigorously condemned Communism, and proclaimed that any Italian Catholic voting for Communists would be excommunicated.

This quote could be a proof against what CGEL is saying. But "the first man having visited the United States" is used here as an inserted phrase so that ï¼© suspect whether we could use such a phrase in normal syntaxes.

paco

[PS] By the way, D-rg, please don't post in bold big letters. When I look a posting in bold big letters, I am inclined to take the poster as if he or she has an intention to provoke other people.

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

more examples of verb phrases please ?

Hela — Sun, 11 Sep 2005 01:51:39 GMT

Dear teachers,

Whatâs the syntactic name of the following structures in English ? How can I get more examples of these ?

A/ 1) Sylvester cried his eyes out.

2) The dog barked him awake.

3) Dora shouted herself hoarse.

4) Well, the conclusion was that my mistress grumbled herself calm.

(What's the meaning of this sentence ?)

B/ 1) The floor had also been swept quite clean of debris.

2) She was shaken awake by the earthquake.

(Are these called âunaccusative verbs" ?)

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C/ 1) The train steamed into the station.>>

(Would you have more examples of such phrasal verbs which might be problematic in a translation exercise ?)

Thank you in advance,>>

Hela>>

PS: I don't understand why some symbols and words I haven't written do appear. Can somebody help ?