Get Off My Case!
Something we don't talk about much when we're discussing grammar over cappuccino alfredo (whoever he is) is the subject of case. Case refers to the relationship of a noun or a pronoun to the other words in a sentence. Sound a bit too much like Transactional Analysis? Nahhhh--let's take a look.
The boy hit the ball.. Boy is the subject of the sentence, because he's the one doing the action, i.e., hitting, right? Ball is the direct object, because it's the hittee. Whether a noun is the hitter or the hittee is all we're talking about when we refer to case, at least in this simple sentence.
As English speakers (more or less), we know who's doing the hitting because of the placement of the nouns in the sentence. Boy comes first, then the verb (you do know that "hit" is a verb, don't you?), then ball. If I wrote, The ball hit the boy, the whole sentence changes meaning--instead of the boy smacking a homer, he's being carted off to the emergency room. But what if we wanted to create a language where it didn't matter where the nouns were placed in the sentence?
Let's play a game. Let's say that, when we want a noun to be the subject of a sentence, we add "-us" to the end. When we want a noun to be the direct object, we'll add "-um". Check it out:
The boyus hit the ballum.
The ballum hit the boyus.
Hey, those two sentences are saying the same thing! Under our funny little rule, the placement of the nouns doesn't matter anymore. From the endings, we know who's doing the hitting, and what's getting hit. But wouldn't that be a goofy way to talk?
Wellsir and ma'am, that's just the way those ancient Romans did it. Latin uses endings like "-us" and "-um" to designate case. And speaking of dead languages, Old English did the same thing.
See, when those Anglo-Saxons stepped off the boat onto the British Isles, they brought a language that added endings to their nouns, so they wouldn't get confused about whether Beowulf was hitting Grendel, or vice versa. We call that language "Old English" (We refrain from calling it "Ye Olde Englishe," lest we welcome accusations of acute dippiness).
So what? So didn't you ever wonder where the heck those endings went? After all, we don't use 'em anymore. Where'd they go? Here's one theory:
The Angles and the Saxons (and the Jutes, too!) got off the boat in what would later be called England (from Angle-land, don'tcha know. Hmmm, the Saxons got short-changed--too bad it didn't become Sexland), and beat up the Celts that were already there, and drank mead and pillaged and whatever the hell you do when there's no baseball. They did that for a couple hundred years, and then another wave of Norsemen floated in, speaking the same language--almost.
Language evolves, as long as it's "living." Read something written two hundred years ago, and you'll notice lots of differences, even though the invention of the printing press has slowed things down quite a bit. But imagine what it was like with a bunch of barbaric, illiterate mead-swillers! (God, help me stay away from Republican jokes) Changes would occur much more rapidly, because there was nothing to standardize the language.
Anyway, the "old" Old English had changed so slowly that it was imperceptible to the generations of speakers who spaekethed it. And the "new" Old English that the new wave of Norsemen brought in had changed, too, from the original language that had been in existence when that first crew of Anglo-Saxons left town. And the endings of the nouns--the things that let everyone know who was doing what to which--had changed the most. The forms of the cases had changed.
So what's a smelly bunch of barbarians to do? The two different versions of the same language sounded a lot alike. They could understand each other--almost. But not quite. When that happens, a process called creolization occurs (no, they didn't start making gumbo), whereby the languages converge into a new language. That "new" language is what we call Middle English. As the old Norsemen and the new Norsemen assimilated, they began to drop the endings that were causing so much confusion.
But how did they know who was hitting whom anymore? You're right--they started placing subjects and direct objects in their sentences so they'd be able to discern hitter from hittee.
Anyway, that's the story as told to me by my linguistics professor about a hundred years ago. I understood what he was saying--almost.
Something we don't talk about much when we're discussing grammar over cappuccino alfredo (whoever he is) is the subject of case. Case refers to the relationship of a noun or a pronoun to the other words in a sentence. Sound a bit too much like Transactional Analysis? Nahhhh--let's take a look.
The boy hit the ball.. Boy is the subject of the sentence, because he's the one doing the action, i.e., hitting, right? Ball is the direct object, because it's the hittee. Whether a noun is the hitter or the hittee is all we're talking about when we refer to case, at least in this simple sentence.
As English speakers (more or less), we know who's doing the hitting because of the placement of the nouns in the sentence. Boy comes first, then the verb (you do know that "hit" is a verb, don't you?), then ball. If I wrote, The ball hit the boy, the whole sentence changes meaning--instead of the boy smacking a homer, he's being carted off to the emergency room. But what if we wanted to create a language where it didn't matter where the nouns were placed in the sentence?
Let's play a game. Let's say that, when we want a noun to be the subject of a sentence, we add "-us" to the end. When we want a noun to be the direct object, we'll add "-um". Check it out:
The boyus hit the ballum.
The ballum hit the boyus.
Hey, those two sentences are saying the same thing! Under our funny little rule, the placement of the nouns doesn't matter anymore. From the endings, we know who's doing the hitting, and what's getting hit. But wouldn't that be a goofy way to talk?
Wellsir and ma'am, that's just the way those ancient Romans did it. Latin uses endings like "-us" and "-um" to designate case. And speaking of dead languages, Old English did the same thing.
See, when those Anglo-Saxons stepped off the boat onto the British Isles, they brought a language that added endings to their nouns, so they wouldn't get confused about whether Beowulf was hitting Grendel, or vice versa. We call that language "Old English" (We refrain from calling it "Ye Olde Englishe," lest we welcome accusations of acute dippiness).
So what? So didn't you ever wonder where the heck those endings went? After all, we don't use 'em anymore. Where'd they go? Here's one theory:
The Angles and the Saxons (and the Jutes, too!) got off the boat in what would later be called England (from Angle-land, don'tcha know. Hmmm, the Saxons got short-changed--too bad it didn't become Sexland), and beat up the Celts that were already there, and drank mead and pillaged and whatever the hell you do when there's no baseball. They did that for a couple hundred years, and then another wave of Norsemen floated in, speaking the same language--almost.
Language evolves, as long as it's "living." Read something written two hundred years ago, and you'll notice lots of differences, even though the invention of the printing press has slowed things down quite a bit. But imagine what it was like with a bunch of barbaric, illiterate mead-swillers! (God, help me stay away from Republican jokes) Changes would occur much more rapidly, because there was nothing to standardize the language.
Anyway, the "old" Old English had changed so slowly that it was imperceptible to the generations of speakers who spaekethed it. And the "new" Old English that the new wave of Norsemen brought in had changed, too, from the original language that had been in existence when that first crew of Anglo-Saxons left town. And the endings of the nouns--the things that let everyone know who was doing what to which--had changed the most. The forms of the cases had changed.
So what's a smelly bunch of barbarians to do? The two different versions of the same language sounded a lot alike. They could understand each other--almost. But not quite. When that happens, a process called creolization occurs (no, they didn't start making gumbo), whereby the languages converge into a new language. That "new" language is what we call Middle English. As the old Norsemen and the new Norsemen assimilated, they began to drop the endings that were causing so much confusion.
But how did they know who was hitting whom anymore? You're right--they started placing subjects and direct objects in their sentences so they'd be able to discern hitter from hittee.
Anyway, that's the story as told to me by my linguistics professor about a hundred years ago. I understood what he was saying--almost.
posted by Pryor at
10:21 PM
