On Sep 18, 2007, at 3:01 PM, Timothy Hunt wrote:
It's called 'grammatical case', and in German it involves different words used as pronouns.
[...]
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].
But in German (and other Germanic languages such as Icelandic), the dative has taken over some of the functions of the accusative, if I remember correctly.
And Jeff (hi! didn't know you were a Rabbit), German-style grammar probably wouldn't have solved the original problem anyway. I'll try to translate into German when I have a minute and see what I get.
Timothy
Best, -- Marnen Laibow-Koser marnen@xxxxxxxxxx