English’s Substitute for Case
rogersgeorge on November 12th, 2022
Lots of languages use word endings (called inflections) to indicate things like possession, movement, and non-movement. English pretty much doesn’t, though we do use apostrophe-s to indicate possession. Some of the time. Here’s a good example of English not using an inflection to indicate movement or not.
In this case we just use a different word.
- “In” means no movement (called dative in other languages).
- “Into” means movement (called accusative in other languages).
- English just uses the two words.
So, did he jump in the pile of leaves or did he jump into the pile of leaves?
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