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Ali.h Posted 16 years ago
Grammar
Declension
Can you please tell me if the following statements are correct:
In English some pronouns decline to indicate case (e.g. he, him, his) and some pronouns in English do not decline at all but rather they receive their own fixed forms (e.g. we, I). In other words when the need comes for these pronouns to indicate case, instead of declining, another new form which is alien to the original form takes their place.
Examples:
If the nominative “we” had to become accusative it would become “us”. And if the nominative “I” had to become accusative it would become “me”.
As you can see “us” looks totally alien to “we”, and “me” looks totally alien to “I”.
I wrote the above and if I'm wrong, then I probably am not understanding the definition of what is declension.
In English some pronouns decline to indicate case (e.g. he, him, his) and some pronouns in English do not decline at all but rather they receive their own fixed forms (e.g. we, I). In other words when the need comes for these pronouns to indicate case, instead of declining, another new form which is alien to the original form takes their place.
Examples:
If the nominative “we” had to become accusative it would become “us”. And if the nominative “I” had to become accusative it would become “me”.
As you can see “us” looks totally alien to “we”, and “me” looks totally alien to “I”.
I wrote the above and if I'm wrong, then I probably am not understanding the definition of what is declension.
Top answer
The forms that you call "fixed" are, in fact, the declined forms for the pronouns. Just because they do not look alike, that does not mean that they are not declined. For example, the Spanish first person nominative pronoun is yo , but the first person accusative pronoun is me .
- The forms that you call "fixed" are, in fact, the declined forms for the pronouns.
- Just because they do not look alike, that does not mean that they are not declined.
- For example, the Spanish first person nominative pronoun is yo , but the first person accusative pronoun is me .
- They do not look anything alike, yet they are both different (declined) case forms for the same pronoun .
- Another example might be from Arabic, where the pronoun declension is extensive.
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2 Answers
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The forms that you call "fixed" are, in fact, the declined forms for the pronouns. Just because they do not look alike, that does not mean that they are not declined.
For example, the Spanish first person nominative pronoun is yo, but the first person accusative pronoun is me
For example, the Spanish first person nominative pronoun is yo, but the first person accusative pronoun is me
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The term "declension" seems to me to be more appropiate for highly inflected languages like Latin. Nevertheless, you can consider the following to be something like declensions.
I, me, my, mine, myself
you, you, your, yours, yourself
he, him, his, his, himself
she, her, her, hers, herself
it, it, its, its, itself
we, us, our, ours, ourselves
you, y
I, me, my, mine, myself
you, you, your, yours, yourself
he, him, his, his, himself
she, her, her, hers, herself
it, it, its, its, itself
we, us, our, ours, ourselves
you, y
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