Re: Vocatives

On Aug 26, 9:43 pm, Harlan Messinger
<hmessinger.removet...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Dominic Bojarski wrote:
On Aug 26, 5:17 pm, Harlan Messinger
<hmessinger.removet...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Dominic Bojarski wrote:
On Aug 26, 3:21 pm, Harlan Messinger
<hmessinger.removet...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
mb wrote:
On Aug 25, 6:52 pm, DKleinecke
I observe that I haven't gotten any responses from anyone who claims
to speak a language with a differentiated vocative. Do languages with
differentiated vocatives still exist?
OK, here is one. Greek keeps the same formally differentiated
vocative from the start,unchanged (isn't it also retained somehow in
Slavic and Baltic?)
And why should the "feel" be different if formally differentiated or
not? As Bojarski rightly says, the vocative is still present in all IE
languages. At least every time you build a phrase addressing someone
(or something) by name, you are using a vocative.
Messinger's formalistic objection just reflects his own philosophy;
Oh. So in your philosophy, every case found in any language in the world
is also found in English? The logical conclusion is that English AND
every other language in the world has every case imaginable. Is that
your philosophy?
And while we're at it, English must have a very large collection of verb
moods consisting of the aggregate of the moods found in all the
languages of the world. Oh, and classifiers. Languages like Chinese have
classifiers, so English must have them too, even if for the most part
they take the form of the null instance.
Don't be absurd. Sometimes it's useful to treat case in terms of
function, and say that English that has a nominative, genitive,
dative, accusative and vocative, or rather, functions that approximate
these cases. This comes naturally to those of use who speak highly
inflected languages,
EXACTLY! The point is that you see the language structure with which you
are familiar as "the way languages are structured" and insist on
superimposing them on other languages. And I bet you can't explain why
it's useful to for you to superimpose the cases of your language on
English but not a dozen other cases that Finnish has but yours doesn't,
or why YOUR language doesn't have an abessive, an adessive, etc.

The point is, it has nothing to do with "usefulness". It has to do with
the definition of the term "case".

especially Indo-European ones. Other times, it's
useful to treat case in terms of morphology, and say English has a
subjective, possessive and objective case that don't exactly overlap
with the historical cases. Both methods can be useful. I use both.
There's nothing strange about this at all. For example, scientists can
treat light as either a stream of particles or a series of waves,
depending on the problem at hand.
In answering the OP's question, I found the functional definition to
be more useful. Especially because he was mislead (and somewhat
mystified) by the morphological definition.
The functional definition is what has him confused in the first place.

And no, it doesn't mean that we have to say that English has an
instrumental, ablative or locative, even though it once did far back
in its history. It simply isn't useful. On the other hand, the
functional vocative in English is the only case that exactly
corresponds to the corresponding case in PIE, which, in this case, is
useful.
It isn't useful, because English now is not PIE. PIE had the features of
PIE. English has the features of English. EVERY language, however, has
the ability to address other people by name. That does not mean every
language has a vocative case.

If you wish to instruct, I will listen and consider what you have to
say. But please do so civilly.

I just reread what I wrote above and see nothing uncivil about it.

Start from the beginning. Please provide the definition of "case" as
you understand it, and the problems associated with my definition.

The problem with your definition is the same as the problem with
defining "cat" as "member of the subspecies canis lupus familiaris" or
"trumpet" as "smallest instrument in the woodwind family": it isn't the
correct definition. There isn't a question of arguing which definition
is more useful when one of them is just plain incorrect.

If
it bothers you that I use the word "case" differently than you do,
please supply alternative terminology for what I described.

Please stop telling me what to do or how to justify my position. I can
use a perfectly good reductio ad absurdum argument by pointing out that
if your argument is correct, then all the cases of Finnish, etc., have
to be considered just as much part of every other language as dative,
ablative, and vocative cases have to be considered part of English. And
then *every* language's grammar book would have a table that looks like:

Ablative ...
Abessive ...
Accusative ...
Adessive ...
etc.

And then nearly all the rows would be duplicates of other rows. If you
insist on discussing the usefulness of this meaning of "case", this
shows why it isn't useful. This is why case tables for German have only
four rows and Latin six.

Now, when you speak a language with some number of cases and learn a new
language that doesn't have those cases, the instruction book is going to
show you, for each of your language's cases, how to convey the same
meaning in the new language, because that's what teaching a foreign
language is: educating the student in how to accomplish in the new
language each thing he knows how to accomplish in his language. But when
the instruction book says, for example, that the notion expressed in the
learner's language by the instrumental case is expressed in English by
"with the" followed by the nominative form of the noun, it's giving an
equivalent. It isn't saying that English has an instrumental case that
happens to be the same as the nominative, or the same as the nominative
preceded by the words "with the". It means that English doesn't have an
instrumental case, and that the same thing is accomplished using means
*other* than case--in this situation, by use of a prepositional phrase.

Be
concrete and thorough. And civil.

I've been uncivil on Usenet before, but this isn't one of those times.

Thank, you, Harlan. I spent the day in the library checking this out,
and, as you say, there is broad consensus for reserving the term
"case" to morphologically distinguishable forms.

I also spent some time looking up Peter's suggestion that I use the
term "thematic roles". I found it difficult to match these to the
Polish or Latin cases, though. They have more to do with semantics
than actual grammar. I did eventually put me on the track of a term
that was closer to the mark: "grammatic relations".

Would it be correct to say that grammatic relations in Latin and
Slavic languages are largely indicated using different cases, whereas
in English, they are indicated by using word order and particles?

Sorry for implying that you were uncivil. You were just being a little
zealous.

Again, thanks a lot. My students will appreciate it.

Dominic Bojarski



.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Leodhasach & Hearasch - Gaelic help please
    ... course our own traditional language is even more neglected than Gaelic is. ... who speak English soon get the gist of it. ... is someone who truly appreciates Scottish culture in that you won't find ...
    (soc.culture.scottish)
  • the tomasites , english and the filipino
    ... And they came to teach English as part of the "policy of attraction" ... a Filipino is deemed illiterate even ... Even a secondary Spanish school like Colegio de San Juan de Letrán ... wrote a textbook to teach the English language as early as 1902. ...
    (soc.culture.filipino)
  • Re: the tomasites , english and the filipino
    ... this change was documented in books written in English or other ... European languages not Tagalog or any other of the Filipino dialects. ... second language, unfortunately it seems that we did not use these ... Even a secondary Spanish school like Colegio de San Juan de Letrán ...
    (soc.culture.filipino)
  • Re: Whats MEXT in English?
    ... > native speakers of English. ... Japan needs more native speaker instructors. ... source of instruction. ... exclusive use of one language or the other. ...
    (sci.lang.japan)
  • Re: OT: Six out of 10 young Americans cannot find Iraq on a map
    ... Language became a political and an emotional issue as early as the ... proposed English Language Amendment, ... Despite the myth that German had once come close to replacing English ... The story of the German Vote is occasionally trotted out by ...
    (alt.guitar.amps)