JK Rowling pens a Harry Potter prequel / War of Roses/Holmes?Figg/Walpurga

[Geoff Bannister]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Carol" <justcarol67 at ...> wrote:

Carol:
> It *functions* as both accusative and dative, but it's *called*
> objective, at least as retained in Modern English, which has no
> accusative or dative cases. The same applies to early Modern English
> of the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras, when "thee" and "thou" were
> still in use.

Geoff:
But that isn't correct,  because the very reason we are discussing this 
matter is that Modern English /has/ these objective cases or 
accusative/dative cases  because of the very existence of him/her/me/us et al.
 
Carol:
> "In Early Modern English, there were two second-person personal
> pronouns: thou, the informal singular pronoun, and ye, which was both
> the plural pronoun and the formal singular pronoun (like modern French
> tu and vous or the German du and Sie). (Thou was already falling out
> of use in the Early Modern English period, but remained customary for
> addressing God and certain other solemn occasions, and sometimes for
> addressing inferiors.) Like other personal pronouns, thou and ye had
> different forms depending on their grammatical case; specifically,
> objective form of thou was thee, its possessive forms were thy and
> thine, and its reflexive or emphatic form was thyself <snip>"
 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Modern_English#Pronouns

Carol, noting that the accusative and dative cases merged with Early
Modern English, becoming what modern grammarians label "the objective
case" at that point, there being no point in distinguishing the cases
when the forms were the same
 
Geoff:
I have to say that, on occasions, I take Wikipedia with a pinch of salt 
because I have found unreliable data in some areas - not this one 
necessarily but I put up against your quote a separate quote from 
the same source which could be read as contradicting your quote...

"The accusative case (abbreviated ACC) of a noun is the grammatical 
case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. The same case 
is used in many languages for the objects of (some or all) prepositions. 
Basically, it is a noun that is having something done to it, usually joined 
(such as in Latin) with the Nominative case.

<snip information not relevant to this discussion>

Modern English, which almost entirely lacks declension in its nouns, 
still has an explicitly marked accusative case in a few pronouns as a 
remnant of Old English, an earlier declined form of the language. 
"Whom" is the accusative case of "who"; "him" is the accusative case 
of "he"; and "her" is the accusative case of "she". These words also 
serve as the dative case pronouns in English and could arguably be 
classified in the oblique case instead. Most modern English 
grammarians feel that due to the lack of declension except in a 
few pronouns, where accusative and dative have been merged, that 
making case distinctions in English is no longer relevant, and 
frequently employ the term "objective case" instead."

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accusative_case)

I would emphasise "/most/ modern English grammarians" which 
implies that although the usage exists, the use of nominative/accusative
/dativeis still valid and chimes with someone like myself who is 
familiar with the terms in at least two other languages.

Again, the quote draws parallels which are not quite comparable because, 
in German, there are three second-person personal pronouns - the 
singular informal "Du", the plural informal "Ihr" and the formal version 
"Sie".

Grammaticum dormiens nunquam titillandus.
:-)