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Old June 27, 2011, 05:24 AM
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Perikles Perikles is offline
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Join Date: Oct 2009
Location: Tenerife
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Thanks, I wasn't trying to be awkward, just that it has been puzzling me for some time why it exists at all. The exact reason appears unknown, but derives from Vulgar Latin and is thought to have been introduced to avoid ambiguity. I see from elsewhere, for example:

Se mató al rey - the king was killed.
Se mató el rey - the king killed himself.

I find it useful to give it the name accusative marker, to bring home to myself that the direct object (accusative) follows (the a probably been derived from ad) This is confusing when the Latin a, ab which takes the ablative case, is still extant in Romance languages, for example French à indicating an indirect object, and even more confusing, Spanish a introducing the indirect object such as in le escribió una carta a su padre.

The above is just me thinking aloud.
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