atw: Re: Apostrophes; long long L-O-N-G [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

More on the matter of form versus function . . . unfortunately I'm in the
wrong office today, so I don't have access to my linguistics library; I
can't give page references or detailed citations. But a quick look at the
work of many grammarians (especially Fillmore's seminal article "The case
for case") makes it clear that modern linguistics does, indeed, see "case"
as a reference to function, not to form. Granted, the use of the traditional
terminology (nominative, accusative, and so on) can act to cloud the issue.
But words like subject, direct object, indirect object are labels for
semantic roles as well as grammatical functions. That is exactly what we
mean by "case". English and some other languages indicate case by word order
(except for the genitive); many other languages represent case by
inflection.

(The misleading term "possessive" instead of genitive is my primary
motivation for using the traditional terminology in this kind of
discussion.)

Similarly, "mood" is not a form, but a function. The representation of mood
choices in English is not the same as in other languages. The fact that few
people now change verb forms to reflect the subjunctive mood does not mean
that the mood (the function of expressing hypotheticality) doesn't exist;
it's just no longer expressed differently from the indicative.


Michael Lewis
-------------------
Brandle Pty Limited
Sydney, Australia
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