Grammatical Case (was: that long subject) War of Roses/Holmes?Figg/Walpurga

[Geoff Bannister]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)" <catlady at ...> 
wrote:
>
> Geoff Bannister wrote in
> <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/36958>:
> 
> > It's interesting that in several languages, the verb "to be" takes a 
> > nominative and yet this "it's me" crops up. In French, which, IIRC, 
> > had no case structure it's "c'est moi".  
> 
> I hope someone can explain this in a way that I can understand,
> because my friend Lee only explains it in ways that I don't
> understand. To me, the cases of English pronouns work like in this
> simple sentence:
> 
> [Subject is subjective] [verb] [object is objective].
> 
> Exempli gratia: It bit me! I admired him. She defeated you. Thou wast
> deceived by them.
> 
> "To be" is a verb. The word before "is" is the subject. The word after
> "is" is the object. So why is there this weird unnatural rule that the
> object of "is" should be in the subjective case?

Geoff:
As I said, English is not the only language where the verb "to be" 
should take a nominative.

If I might take your example "She defeated you"...

"She" is the subject, the person or thing initiating the action. "You" 
is the person or thing on which the action is performed and is thus 
accusative. {You'll excuse me avoiding subjective and objective 
because I don't see these in the context of grammar. Carol does. :-)}

In a case like "I am a grocer", the subject "I" is NOT performing some 
sort of action such as "defeating" or "helping" on a different person. 
"I" and "the grocer" are one and the same person - the subject. Hence, 
it is quite valid for "to be" to take the nominative case after the verb.

To take a cases in other languages, consider Latin. The word for 
king in the nominative is "rex", in the accusative "regem". "I am" is 
"ego sum" - the "ego" is frequently omitted and "sum" suffices. To say 
"I am the king", you would write "(ego) sum rex" - NOT - (ego) sum 
regem".  In German, "I am the teacher" is "Ich bin der Lehrer" (nominative) - 
NOT - "Ich bin den Lehrer" (accusative).

Both the above for the reasons I gave in English.

Hope that makes things a bit clearer.