Case part two

We use the subjective (nominative) case for two things in English—the subject of a sentence or clause, which everyone gets pretty much correct pretty much all the time. The other place for the nominative is in a construction called the predicate nominative. Remember that term? I’ll explain it later. First we need two items of background.

First, think about how basic sentences are constructed in English. One basic sentence goes Subject, Verb, Direct Object. In that order. Since English has dropped a lot of inflectional endings, the order is usually important. Tom saw Mike is different from Mike saw Tom. (Notice that both names have the same form in both places) A lot of languages put a syllable or so at the end of a word to indicate how it’s used in the sentence. In Greek, for example, we might have something equivalent to Tomos saw Mikeon and Mikeos saw Tomon. That -os and -on are inflectional endings. It’s handy, in a way, to have inflectional endings because if you write Mikeon Tomos saw, your reader would know who saw whom without needing the word order. In fact the Greeks played with word order a lot because they could, with all those inflectional endings, and they had a lot of them.

Direct objects aren’t in the nominative case; they ‘re in the objective case, even if English doesn’t use an inflection to say so. Hence the ‘whom’ in the previous paragraph. That -m on whom is an inflectional ending. Literally, if I had written “who saw who.” I could have been writing about someone looking at his reflection in the mirror. (You might object that the reader can figure it out from the context. True, but that violates one of the main tenets of good writng. I mention it in that freebie order form in the right margin of this blog, but if you ask me directly, I’ll just tell you.)

When you think about word order, a predicate adjective looks a lot like a direct object.

Now the second bit of background, the verb “to be.” This word, in every language I have any acquaintance with, breaks a lot of rules that apply to most verbs. For one thing, it’s always irregular. You have to learn the different forms; it doesn’t follow the patterns most other verbs follow. We say, for example,  ”I see, you see, he sees” but “I am, you are, he is.” No pattern.  Another thing about “to be” is that it is equivalent to an equals sign, but almost every other verb is equivalent to doing something. When Tom sees, he is doing something. But when Tom is the boss, that means Tom=boss.

Since both ends of a sentence containing some form of “to be” are equivalent, we use the nominative. We would say Tomos is the bossos.  The correct case is easier to remember in highly inflected languages. In English, where word order is so important, we get used to the pattern of having the objective case at the end of the sentence, so we tend use it all the time. “It’s me, Oh Lord, standin’ in the need of prayer” goes the song.

My Freshman English professor told this story:

St. Peter, at the pearly gates: Who’s there?

Person: “It is I.”

St. Peter: Ah, an English teacher!

So there you have it. Verbs of being take the nominative. Officially. I suppose it’s a losing battle, but at least now you know.

And I humbly beg the indulgence and forgiveness of you Greek scholars out there.

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Grammatical case is a subject worth several posts. Perhaps the subject is best approached with a comic first.

The Alt text on the original is "The syntax is strong with this one"

I met the artist for this comic, John Wigger, recently on line, in a hang out on Google+. I had been thinking about doing a series on case, and this strip makes a good place to start. Here’s a link to the comic site, Zombie roomie.

Case is a way of telling you how a word is used in a sentence, usually by changing the letters at the end of the word. Every Indo-European language (far as I know) uses case, but many languages don’t. For example, Hebrew (Semitic language family) doesn’t have case.

My sixth-grade teacher taught us that English had three cases—Subjective, Objective, and Possessive. The guy in the comic is using nominative instead of subjective. (Frankly, I like this better. Nominative is the term used in other languages.) Since I’m giving you vocabulary here, I’ll tell you a few more: Objective is called accusative in other languages, and possessive is called genitive. Other cases exist, but not in English.

In future posts I’ll tell you how to get case correct, and warn you against common ways to get it wrong.

One last item. Why did your parents and teachers always correct you when you said “me and Tom” with “Tom and I”? The only reason to put yourself last is humility. It has nothing to do with grammar.

Normally I post every other day, but I just ran into another correct use of “comprise,” which I mentioned a few days ago. So this post is an extra, between my usual posts. Repetition is the mother of learning, eh?

This is from the weekly comments newsletter sent out each Sunday from AWAD, which I highly recommend.

Yes, this is a symmetry problem. Any word has the same property if its spelling exclusively comprises some of these upper case letters: BCDEHIOX.

The big thing comprises its parts. Correct!

I read the funnies. They were my favorite part of the daily paper when I was a kid, and now I read them online regularly. I recently realized  that I never see a mistake in grammar in a comic unless the mistake is deliberate. Many strips have a row of buttons underneath so you can look at earlier or later episodes. Even the button that you click to see the previous comic is correct. It says “Previous,” not “Prior.”

What caused me to realize the rarity of grammar mistakes in comics was when I saw one recently. Scott Meyer writes a very funny comic. His comic, Basic Instructions, is one of my favorites. The humor is at once subtle, and to me, anyway, hilarious.

Full disclosure: He fixed the goof. If you go to his site, you'll see the corrected version.

You see the mistake, right? (It’s the first “you’re” in the last panel.) A lot of people mix up words that sound alike, and getting “your” and “you’re” wrong is a favorite for sixth-grade English teachers to pounce on. In Scott’s case, I’m pretty sure it was a slip of the fingers since he’s obviously a professional.

The lesson here is to proofread your writing. Make sure you don’t accidentally write something you don’t intend.

“Comprise” is a frequently misused word, a common accessory to the sin of pretentiousness. People want to sound high class, so they write “is comprised of” when they mean “is composed of” or even plain old “composes.”

I ran into an article in The New York Times online that presented them with a wonderful opportunity to be pretentious, and they didn’t take it! Hooray (for once) for The New York Times! here’s what they said, and it’s correct:

The project follows the successful effort by a group at the museum to replicate a far less complicated Babbage invention: the Difference Engine No. 2, a calculating machine composed of roughly 8,000 mechanical components assembled with a watchmaker’s precision.

The machine is composed of parts! Yesss!

Now that is a construction in the passive voice. What if they had wanted to use the active voice? Then they would have written:

The project follows the successful effort by a group at the museum to replicate a far less complicated Babbage invention: the Difference Engine No. 2, a calculating machine comprising roughly 8,000 mechanical components assembled with a watchmaker’s precision.

Now “comprise” is appropriate.

Never ever say “…is comprised of…” Ever! Unless you’re showing someone what not to do. Harrumpf.

Here’s a picture of the difference engine.

The machine is about eight feet tall. That's a picture of Charles Babbage on the wall.