[HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: JK Rowling pens a Harry Potter prequel / War of Roses/Holmes?Figg/Walpurga

[Lee Kaiwen]

Carol:
But what you're calling "dative" is the objective case, used
for direct objects, indirect objects (as in your example, with an
implied "to")

But the modern "objective" case is, roughly speaking, simply the 
"dative" renamed. And I think it's a bit anachronistic to read an 
implied "to" in "Give him the ball" just to shoehorn the sentence into 
the "objective" case. I'd go along with Geoff here that this is the 
dative case (one of its remnants), in origin different from "Give the 
ball to him" (or even "Give to him the ball"), which is the accusative.

The problem with the modern term "objective case" is that it's a 
catch-all for at least the accusative and dative cases, and hence tends 
to cloud up linguistic analysis. While the two forms "Give him the ball" 
and "Give the ball to him" may be semantically equivalent in modern 
English, they are both etymologically and syntactically quite distinct, 
the "him" in "Give him the ball" deriving from the Old English 
accusative "hine", and the "him" in "Give the ball to him" from the 
dative "him". Trying to analyze both as simply "objective case" obscures 
their origins and makes it impossible to answer questions such as why 
English has two grammatical forms for the same semantic utterance.


Carol:
The term "objective case" makes perfect sense ... There's no need to 
distinguish accusative from dative when there's no distinction in form.

ME (CJ):
This is true only if by "form" you restrict yourself to morphology. 
English DOES retain the syntactic distinctions between the cases (see 
above and below).

(Yes, I realize that strictly defined "case" *is* morphology, but that 
doesn't mean case made no syntactical demands. Having morphologically 
marked "him", for example, does not utterly free me with respect to word 
order.)

CJ (earlier):
"thee" is (both) the accusative (and dative) form of the nominative "thou".

Carol:
It *functions* as both accusative and dative, but it's *called* objective

Me (now):
It has recently been relabeled by many (not all) grammarians as the 
"objective" case, but still a rose by any other name....

But modern grammarians who attempt to entirely subsume accusative and 
dative under a single category find themselves forced to reinvent the 
distinctions, e.g,. as in "direct" vs. "indirect" objects, which are 
simply renamed accusative and dative cases.

I love thee.
I give thee all my love.
I give all my love to thee.
I give all my love thee.

If every "thee" is simply "objective case", how does one distinguish 
when to use "to"? In the first sentence, it's disallowed; in the second, 
optional; in the third, required. Yet a modern grammarian would in every 
case save the first call "thee" an indirect object.

And then what does one do with the fourth sentence? Us moderns, lacking 
in understanding of the accusative and dative functions of "thee", are 
tempted to simply call it ungrammatical. Yet the syntax was quite common 
well into the early modern period. E.g."Have you the lion's part 
written? pray you, if it be, give it me, for I am slow of study." 
(Midsummer Night's Dream, Act I Scene 2), or "But I know, that even now, 
whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will give it thee." (John 11:22, KJV).

Carol:
Apparently, the film follows the book and the book reflects real usage 
among some but not all Quakers of the time.)

CJ:
I'm no Quaker expert, but my understanding is that the Quakers were 
attempting to follow the original informal understanding of "thee", and 
used it indiscriminately in both subject and object positions as a sort 
of forced egalitanarianism (an attempt to show we are all equal before 
God). But I think the Quaker usage must be held an aberration, or a 
dialectical idiosyncracy.

Carol:
My point is, English *lost* the accusative and dative cases, which
*merged* to become the objective case, when it lost the inflections
that distinguished those two cases. And that merger occurred at a time
when "thee" and "thou" were in use.

Me:
It lost the morphological distinctions; and yet grammarians continued to 
distinguish accusative and dative cases long after the morphological 
distinctives had disappeared (the subsumption of the two into a single 
"objective case" is a 20th century phenomenon still not universally 
followed). I think there are two possible explanations. Either they were 
simply hadn't gotten around to jettisoning older terminology, or they 
genuinely still found the cases useful, any lack of morphological 
distinction notwithstanding.

CJ