> It's called 'grammatical case', and in German it involves different > words used as pronouns. I don't remember specifically which case would > have been used in the parallel German construction, nor which specific > word, but if I recall correctly, the German for 'they' in that > construction would have been one of 'sie', 'ihr', 'ihn', or 'ihnen'. The > four cases are called 'nominative', 'accusative', 'genitive', and > 'dative'; nominative is a rough match to the 'subject' of the sentence; > 'accusative' is a rough match to the direct object of the sentence; > 'genitive' is, if I recall correctly, an associational case, similar to > but not restricted to possessive, and I have no recollection of the > usage of the dative case. Dative is typically indirect object. So... John [nominative] took Tracy's [genetive] ball [accusative] from the closet [dative]. Then he [nominative] put it [accusative] back in it [dative]. Timothy