Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2021 October 27

= October 27 =

Grammatical case question
In the sentence "The man was bitten by the dog", what is the grammatical case of "dog"? Lantzy : Lantzy 02:28, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Objective (or accusative if you prefer that terminology). It's the object of the preposition "by".  Compare: "The answer was given by me" (not "I"). --184.144.99.72 (talk) 02:58, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Instrumental case. In English this is indicated by the presence of 'by'; English does not use declension to indicate this case.--2A00:23C8:4583:9F01:716C:7BA1:5958:CB07 (talk) 03:06, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
 * In modern English, Instrument(al) is more of a thematic relation than a "case" in the usual sense... AnonMoos (talk) 03:35, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
 * In modern English, it does not really make too much sense to discuss grammatical case, since there are only just a few rudimentary remains of the IE case system (mainly in pronouns). In languages that no longer depend on case, the preposition construct is one way of expressing the same semantic value. Another way is word order: "Man bit dog" vs. "Dog bit man". In a truly case-dependant language, the word order could be irrelevant, since the case of the words for 'man' and 'dog' would tell who bit and who was bitten. --T*U (talk) 07:15, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Modern English has only rudiments of its older Germanic case system left in the personal pronouns (as also pointed out by 184.144.99.72): I – me; he – him; she – her; we – us; they – them. These forms can't be used interchangeably in standard English; the use of the appropriate form is obligatory, so it is too early to dispose of the notion of grammatical case. The dative and accusative cases of Old English merged, while the genitive and instrumental cases were lost. (Some people consider the possessive form "father's", as in "my father's house", to be the genitive case of English. Although its origin may have been a Germanic case form, linguists today generally no longer classify this as a grammatical case.) Since, next to the nominative/vocative case, the language has now only one grammatical case left, used for all other instances than the subject (with a curious exception for "you and I", as in "between you and I"), it could also be dubbed "the" oblique case, but the term "objective case" is more common.  --Lambiam 09:56, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
 * "Between you and I" is bad English, though. "Between you and me" is the proper form. "you and I" is used by folks trying to sound posh and proper but don't actually understand the rules of grammar. 2600:1702:4960:1DE0:D8A0:BDBC:2DED:46C5 (talk) 01:12, 30 October 2021 (UTC)
 * I assume the objective "...and I" is a hypercorrection by people who were scolded for saying "me and Timmy" as a subject. (But that raises the question, why is subject "me and Timmy" common when subject "me" is not?) —Tamfang (talk) 02:09, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Methinks it's fairly rare nowadays. It sounds too much like Tonto: "Me work 30 years for Kemo Sabe…" ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 02:35, 4 November 2021 (UTC)


 * In Indo-European languages that role is normally expressed by the instrumental or whatever other case it merged into, e.g. ablative in Latin, von + dative in German, and the monolithic "oblique"/"object" case in English. – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱 10:36, 27 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks, what I was really looking for was what case would be used in a language where case distinctions play a big role and are not vestigial as in English. Instrumental is what I was after. Lantzy : Lantzy 00:52, 28 October 2021 (UTC)