trafal Posted October 23, 2019 Share Posted October 23, 2019 I have a grammar question. My daughter is using Hake/ Saxon Grammar Grade 5. On lesson 99 # 12 The exercise reads I think that (we, us) painters need help. So, as I understand it The nominative case is used for subjects and predicate nominatives (being verb) . The nominative case pronouns are I, you, he, she, it, we, you, they etc) . The objective case is used for objective of the preposition, direct object, and indirect object (action verb). The objective case pronouns are me, you , him, her it, us, you, them etc) When I analyze the sentence above I am drawing a blank. I= subject think= verb painters= direct object The teacher book says the correct answer is "we". However it seems to me that the pronoun is functioning as an indirect object and the answer should be "us" Does anyone have any insight? Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
forty-two Posted October 23, 2019 Share Posted October 23, 2019 If you took out painters - "I think that (we, us) need help" - then I would intuitively pick we - "I think that *we* need help", not "I think that *us* needs help." Thinking it through, I think that the "that" is key - it's introducing a clause. So "(we,us) painters" is the subject of the that-clause, so it's in the nominative case. 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Violet Crown Posted October 24, 2019 Share Posted October 24, 2019 11 hours ago, trafal said: I think that (we, us) painters need help. The standard English here would be "I think that we painters need help." There are two things going on here grammatically. One is that, as forty-two noted, that is a subordinator, marking the subordinate clause "we painters need help." More interestingly, you have here an example of a personal determinative. Our more familiar determinatives are words like the, a, this, that, all, both, and so on. We and you, however (but not other personal pronouns!), can be used as determinatives, as in "you guys" and "we painters." So painters is the subject of the subordinate clause, and we is its determinative. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
trafal Posted October 24, 2019 Author Share Posted October 24, 2019 Forty-Two, Thank you !!! Now I get it ! The key was thinking of the phrase "that (we, us) painters need help" as a dependent clause. Once I recognized it as a dependent clause then everything fell into place. My daughter uses IEW for writing and they teach who/which and www.asia.b (when ,while, where, as, since, if , although, and because) as clause openers . It did not occur to me to recognize "that" as opening a clause. Thank you for responding because it was really driving me crazy to not be able to know why N.answered the question incorrectly. Violet Crown, Thank you very much for your input. I had never heard of a personal determinative. I read some additional information about personal derminiatives. This definitely helps me understand the grammatical structure in a deeper way. I was thinking of we painters as a pronoun/ appositive pair but I knew that wasn't quite right. Your post was very helpful! Trafal 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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