User:HappyCamper/Sandbox

Grammar - Subject/Object = Nominative/Accusative?
I have read List of grammatical cases, and the articles nominative case, accusative case, but I cannot seem to be able to differentiate between "subject"/"object" and the "nominative"/"accusative". Could someone explain the difference? I'm interested in this primarily so I can understand German grammar better. Thanks! --HappyCamper 00:46, 26 July 2005 (UTC)


 * There's nothing really to differentiate between a case and a part of speech. It's like comparing apples to oranges. A case is a set of inflections (in German mostly the article, but also adjective endings) that indicates what part of speech a word is, or what its role is in the sentence. The nominative case is the case of the subject, i.e. all subjects are in the nominative and all nominatives are subjects of their clauses. The accusative case is the case of the direct object, so all direct objects are in the accusative and (generally) all accusatives are direct objects. There are a few cases where an accusative is not strictly a direct object. In German, those instances are:


 * Accusatives following an intransitive verb, such as Er starb einen schweren Tod, "He died a difficult death."
 * Accusatives by themselves, such as in Guten Morgen. A verb such as wünschen, to wish, is to be understood as governing this object.
 * Accusatives are used to denote adverbially length of time or a point in time, a measurement or value, and to express distance with verbs and adverbs denoting motion.
 * The greatest and most common exception of all is that the accusative case follows some prepositions. In German, they are: bis, durch, für, gegen, ohne, and um. There are also certain "swing prepositions" that can be followed by accusatives if they're communicating movement in a particular direction, or the dative if they're denoting location: an, auf, entlang, hinter, in, neben, über, unter, vor, and zwischen.


 * Another thing to note is that "object" covers two different kinds of objects, direct and indirect. Accusatives are of the direct sort, while datives are of the indirect sort. James 02:41, July 26, 2005 (UTC)

Part of the reason for the confusion is that the terms nominative and accusative were originally part of the description of latin and greek noun declensions. As opposed to English and German, latin and greek are strongly declined (e.g., the ending of the noun indicates whether it is nom or acc). In latin and greek, nom and acc are almost synonymous with subject and object of sentences (or at least of transitive verbs). The nomenclature makes less sense in languages such as english and german where word order may be more important than ending (e.g., man bites dog and dog bites man). So despite the exceptions and elaborations in german, in the languages in which nom and acc cases originated, they do roughly indicate subject and object. alteripse 03:03, 26 July 2005 (UTC)


 * Thanks to your responses, both! I think it's going to take some time before I can absorb this information. Grammar is not a forte of mine right now, and I guess I am finding it difficult expressing what it is I don't understand. In a lot of German language textbooks I've read, they seem to be very unclear about nominative/accusative cases being related to subject and (direct) object. Maybe some examples would help.


 * Sie hat das Auto. (Nominative?)
 * Sie sucht den Hörsaal. (Accusative?)


 * First of all, does "nominative case" and "accusative case" refer to the entire sentence, or only to the nouns? What part of the sentence is in what case? Thanks for your help! --HappyCamper 04:48, 26 July 2005 (UTC)


 * Every noun, pronoun, article, and adjective has its own case. Adjectives that are paired with nouns must always be the same case, number, and gender, as the noun, which is called "agreeing" with the noun. So, in your examples, Sie is the subject and is thus in the nominative. In both sentences, sie is the singular feminine nominative pronoun, "she." Das Auto and den Hörsaal are the direct objects and are thus both in the accusative. The car is what she has and the lecture-hall is what she seeks. A good help to determining the case of a noun is that it is usually preceeded by an article, which narrows down your possibilities. There are only two instances where das is used, the neuter nominative and accusative singular. There is only one instance when den is used of a masculine noun, in the accusative singular.


 * Also, word order helps alot, because, even though German is freer with word order than in English, there are some very general guidelines. The subject in the nominative almost always is the first part of the clause or the second if it is a question. The objects almost always follow the verb of the sentence and the indirect objects, in the dative, are followed by the direct objects, in the accusative. An example is Ich gab dir einen Apfel, "I gave you an apple," where dir is in the dative and einen Apfel in the accusative. There are, of course, exceptions to this, but that will help 90% of the time. James 05:12, July 26, 2005 (UTC)


 * light starts to turns on --> OH! Now I think I understand. Every part of the sentence has a "case". Would it be correct to say this? Loosely speaking, the subject of a sentence in German is in the nominative case, and the direct object is in the accusative? (Is this the same as in English, or are other cases used instead? The two langauges seem to be quite similar...) Thanks again for your help! --HappyCamper 12:45, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

Grammatical case is, strictly, applied to nouns, pronouns, articles and adjectives: prepositions and finite verbs do not have grammatical case. A simple sentence may be thought of having up to four parts: Thus, case is a way of marking parts of the sentence (the dog bites the man on the knee). Pronouns are a shorthand: it bites him on the knee. The subject and object can both be a 'noun phrase' made up of a number words: we could replace the man with the noun phrase the tall, flamboyant man, and that phrase would be the new object. --Gareth Hughes 13:06, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
 * 1) the subject (the dog) is the actor of the sentence: in German and English this usually goes before the verb, and it is marked with the nominative case,
 * 2) the verb (bites) is essential to the construction of a (major) sentence,
 * 3) the object (the man) is what is acted upon, usually coming after the verb and is in the accusative case,
 * 4) the adverbial (on the knee) is extra information, if needed, it often contains a preposition (on) and its own prepositional object, which, in German, are put in case determined by the preposition (certain prepositions demand that their object take a certain case).


 * Perhaps a decent way to think about it is that every "thing" in a sentence has case, while actions do not. So in Ich gab dir einen Apfel, Ich, dir, and einen Apfel all have case, because they are "things" of some sort. Gab, on the other hand, is an action, and doesn't have a case, but is instead conjugated English does not have case in exactly the same way. A subject in English can be said (and often is in grammars) to be in the nominative, but it is somewhat misleading because there is no discernable difference between the various cases in English. One exception is the pronouns. You say, "Who is that?," but "Whom shall I see," because who is the nominative form and whom is the accusative form. Likewise, "He went to the store," and "I sent him to the store." "He" is nominative and "him" is accusative.


 * The question word "who" reminded me of an excellent way to remember the cases. In German, they are often called Werfall (nominative), the "who case", Wenfall (accusative), the "whom case", Wemfall (dative), the "to whom case", and Wesfall (genitive), the "whose case". James 18:12, July 26, 2005 (UTC)

(I moved James's post here so it could be commented upon) In the example sentence above, Ich gab dir einen Apfel, we can see four parts: The difference between direct and indirect objects is quite straightforward. The direct object is always that which is acted upon by the verb (the apple is given). The indirect object is usually a recipient. --Gareth Hughes 18:30, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Ich, the pronoun I, which is the subject and is in the nominative case.
 * gab, the verb.
 * dir, the pronoun you, which is the indirect object, and is in the dative case.
 * einen Apfel, a noun phrase consisting of the indefinite article (einen) and a noun (Apfel), which is the direct object, and is in the accusative case.


 * Thanks so much for the explanations everyone. It's really cleared up some of the concepts I have in German grammar! --HappyCamper 00:55, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

Proof of the uncertainty principle given in Barbara's book with modifications by me:

Let f be a function of real x where
 * $$	\int_{-\infty}^{\infty} \left | f(x) \right |^2 \, dx = 1.$$

Hence f and its Fourier transform are probability densities.


 * $$\left ( \int_{-\infty}^{\infty} (x-x_m)^2 \left | f(x) \right |^2 \, dx \right )

\left ( \int_{-\infty}^{\infty} (\xi-\xi_m)^2 \left | \hat f(\xi) \right |^2 \, d\xi \right ) \ge \frac{1}{16 \pi^2} $$

Proof: Start with these definitions:


 * $$g(x) = \exp(2\pi i x \xi_m) f(x +x_m) \,\!$$

Then
 * $$\hat g(\xi) = \exp(-2\pi i x_m (\xi + \xi_m) \hat f(\xi +\xi_m) \,\!$$

From this we get
 * $$\left ( \int_{-\infty}^{\infty} x^2 |g(x)|^2 \, dx \right )

\left ( \int_{-\infty}^{\infty} \xi^2 |\hat g(\xi)|^2 \, d \xi \right ) = \left ( \int_{-\infty}^{\infty} (x-x_m)^2 \left | f(x) \right |^2 \, dx \right ) \left ( \int_{-\infty}^{\infty} (\xi-\xi_m)^2 \left | \hat f(\xi) \right |^2 \, d\xi \right ) $$

Hence, to show the result, it is necessary and sufficient to show that the above result is greater than $$\frac{1}{16 \pi^2} .$$

Observe that


 * $$\xi \hat f(\xi) = - \frac{1}{2 \pi i} \hat f^\prime (x).$$


 * $$\left ( \int_{-\infty}^{\infty} x^2 |f(x)|^2 \, dx \right )

\left ( \int_{-\infty}^{\infty} \xi^2 |\hat f(\xi)|^2 \, d \xi \right ) = \frac {1}{4 \pi^2} \left ( \int_{-\infty}^{\infty} x^2 |f(x)|^2 \, dx \right ) \left ( \int_{-\infty}^{\infty} x^2 |\hat f^\prime (\xi)|^2 \, d \xi \right ) $$

Using the Parseval's theorem and isometry (preservation of power)

\frac {1}{4 \pi^2} \left ( \int_{-\infty}^{\infty} x^2 |f(x)|^2 \, dx \right ) \left ( \int_{-\infty}^{\infty} x^2 |f^\prime (x)|^2 \, d x \right ) $$

Now, we invoke the Schwarz inequality
 * $$|\vec v |^2 |\vec w |^2 \ge |<\vec v,\vec w> |^2$$

Let
 * $$\vec v(x) = f(x), \vec w(x) = f^\prime(x) $$

Hence,
 * $$\frac {1}{4 \pi^2}

\left ( \int_{-\infty}^{\infty} x^2 |f(x)|^2 \, dx \right ) \left ( \int_{-\infty}^{\infty} x^2 |f^\prime (x)|^2 \, dx \right ) \ge \frac {1}{4 \pi^2} \left ( \int_{-\infty}^{\infty} |x f(x) f^\prime (x)| \, dx \right )^2 $$

For any pair of complex numbers a and b
 * $$ |ab| \le \frac{1}{2} (\bar ab + a \bar b). $$

Hence,


 * $$\frac {1}{4 \pi^2}

\left ( \int_{-\infty}^{\infty} |x f(x) f^\prime (x) | \right )^2 \ge \left ( \frac{1}{2} \int_{-\infty}^{\infty}      ( x f(x) \overline{f^\prime(x)} + \overline{x f(x)} f^\prime(x))\right )^2 $$

Since
 * $$\frac{d}{dx} |f(x)|^2 = f(x) \overline{f^\prime(x)} + \overline{f(x)} f^\prime(x) $$

we have

\left ( \frac{1}{2} \int_{-\infty}^{\infty}      ( x f(x) \overline{f^\prime(x)} + \overline{x f(x)} f^\prime(x)) \, dx \right )^2 \ge \frac{1}{16 \pi^2} \left ( \int_{-\infty}^{\infty} x \frac{d}{dx} |f(x)|^2 \, dx  \right ) $$

Finally, with integration by parts, we get



\frac{1}{16 \pi^2} \left ( \int_{-\infty}^{\infty} x \frac{d}{dx} |f(x)|^2 \, dx \right ) \ge \frac{1}{16 \pi^2} \left (- \int_{-\infty}^{\infty} |f(x)|^2 \, dx \right ) = \frac{1}{16 \pi^2} $$

Hence, we have the result
 * $$\left ( \int_{-\infty}^{\infty} (x-x_m)^2 \left | f(x) \right |^2 \, dx \right )

\left ( \int_{-\infty}^{\infty} (\xi-\xi_m)^2 \left | \hat f(\xi) \right |^2 \, d\xi \right ) \ge \frac{1}{16 \pi^2} $$

The Hounds of Spring
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Tristan de Cunha
http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2006-July/050766.html