Nominative or Accusative

[Grsartor at AOL.COM]

Hailai,
 
A thing to watch about the case that goes with forms of the verb "to be" is 
 that it is sometimes accusative. This applies even in English in sentences 
like  these:
 
 they believe him (not he, obviously) to be the  culprit
they believe the culprit to be him (not he,  less obviously)
 
Likewise in Gothic
 
 ...unte wissedun Xristu ina wisan
they knew him to be Christ  (Luke 4:41)
 
 ...hwana mik qithand mans wisan?
whom do men say me to be?  (Mark 8:27)
 
Interestingly the second example was originally translated in the King  
James bible as
 
 whom do men say that I am?
 
but was later corrected to
 
 who do men say that I am?
 
since this is not an example of an accusative and infinitive, though it was 
 in the Greek.
 
Gerry T.
 
 
In a message dated 15/02/2012 00:58:37 GMT Standard Time,  
anheropl0x at gmail.com writes:

I knew  there was a specific word for this (copula), but I'd have to dig 
through a  couple Latin books to find it. I did not know that there were that 
many Copula  in Gothic. My mother tongue is German, but German doesn't 
really have any  changes in nouns from Nom. to Akk.

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com,  "kevin.behrens at ..." 
<becareful_icanseeyourfuture at ...>  wrote:
>
> Hello.
> I must be in the nominative case. Not  only "to be" is a copula, even "to 
become", "to keep being", "to stay  something" and "to seem as" are copulas 
and are those kinds of verbs where  both arguments are in the nominative 
case. What is your mother language? For  English speakers this might be hard, 
because there is hardly no case  opposition, but for Germans or other case 
languages that might be easier, as  they do it intuitively. 
> Your sentence then is: "...mi��anei  unwitans magun �iudanos wisan" 
> But I'm not sure about the order,  whether it must be: �iudanos wisan 
or wisan �iudanos. I would say the  latter one. 
> Liubos goleinis.
>  Kevin
>




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