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From: stevemac@bud.indirect.com (Pascal MacProgrammer)
Subject: One point against Esperanto
Message-ID: <D6wFHo.7w4@indirect.com>
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Organization: Department of Redundancy Department
Date: Wed, 12 Apr 1995 01:44:11 GMT
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Not so very long ago, eassong@yorku.ca (Gord Easson) said...
 
>In English, nominative case (subject) is assigned by [+ tense] Infl. 
>Accusative case (object of verb) is assigned by the Verb.   Dative case
>(object of preposition) is assigned by the Preposition.  Genetive case
>(object of noun as in apostrophe construction) is assigned by the noun. 
>All English nouns are unmarked for Nominative, Accusative and Dative case. 

  The case-system that I use is Subjective (corresponds to Latin 
Nominative and Vocative), Possessive (corresponds to Latin Genitive), 
Objective (corresponds to all other Latin cases).  (Some use Latin names 
for these, and that's all right, too.  But they name only three cases.)

  Nominative is for subjects, predicate nominatives, and vocatives.
  Objective is for objects (both direct and indirect) of verbs, and 
objects of prepositions.
  This distinction can be seen only in some pronouns; these two cases are 
identical for all nouns.
  For nouns, Possessive is the form with an apostrophe at or near the 
end; pronouns have separate Possessive forms (my, your, his, etc).
 
>Now, how does Esperanto work?

  Esperanto has two cases:  Nominative and Accusative.
  Nominative is used for subjects, predicate nominatives, vocatives, and
objects of all prepositions. 
  Accusative is used for direct objects of verbs (there are no indirect
objects), and objects of prepositions indicating place (to indicate motion
toward that place, like Latin using Accusative instead of Ablative).  
There are also some absolute expressions that stand in the Accusative.
  There is no Genitive/Possessive case.  One forms the equivalent of this
with the preposition "de" plus the Nominative for nouns, creating a
prepositional phrase; and with a suffixed "-a" for pronouns, creating an
adjective. 

  The Accusative of nouns and pronouns is formed by adding "-n" to the 
Nominative (after the "-j" plural-ending of nouns, if present).

-- 
                              ==----=                    Steve MacGregor
                             ([.] [.])                     Phoenix, AZ
--------------------------oOOo--(_)--oOOo----------------------------------
        Help stamp out, eliminate, and abolish redundancy!
