Heill Keth,

Thank you for your ponderings on grammar :) I should like to use the
opportunity to make some (hopefully) educative comments.

It's amuzing that grammarians should be inclined to use terms
like "ablative" in regard to ON. It's about equally impractical and
confusing as using the terms "nominative" and "accusative" in regard
to Modern English! Semantically speaking, all languages
have "ablative", at least to the extent that ON or English do; in
that sense, "out of the car" is an example of English ablative. The
point is, neither English nor ON have a *separate form* for the
ablative; and that's what counts.

Languages seldom or perhaps never have exactly the same system of
distinctions; English differentiates adjectives and adverbs, but
German doesn't. If English would do as German, we'd say "I quick
left", instead of "I quickly left". So as far as German is concerned,
of what use is a term like 'adverb'?

So we might identify all the possible roles, usages, categories that
people could possibly think of differentiating in their languages;
the resulting system would amount to "universal grammar" (not as
dramatic as it sounds). But analyzing every language according to
that system would be very impractical...

Let's take a sample analysis of an English sentence:

"two guys stepped out of the car"

We might analyze "guys" as a noun in dual nominative, "stepped" as a
verb in 3rd person dual active indicative, and "car" as singular
ablative. And that's using only the grammatical terms that are
precedent in Western grammars. Other alien distinctions are bound to
exist somewhere in the language jungle out there.

Obviously, that would be very impractical.

I have a simple analogy to explain my point. The grammatical system
of a language is similar to a system of measurement, such
as "imperial" or "metric". When you put a ruler with inch
measurements on it next to an equally long ruler with centimetres on
it, you'll see how the "notches" don't fit each other. Still, the
rulers are equally long, undisputably; the distance is the same, no
matter how you measure it. The distance is analogous to what I
called "universal grammar" above; the conflicting notches and
measurements are analogous to our various grammatic terms.

Remember, languages weren't invented by grammarians, just as the
Earth wasn't invented by geologists. Grammarians and linguists are
just trying to study a phenomenon that they still only understand
marginally, while thinking of various systems and terms to try to
contain the phenomenon and make it easier to handle. They aren't
always right, and even when they are, they aren't always practical.

In language learning, when you have a "feel" for a language, you no
longer need artificial systems to contain it.

My point is, don't feel too bound by terms; just try to understand
the usage, then go on to contain the language in any way you find
practical. If "nominative" seems like a silly word to use, just use
some other word that feels better. As long as you get the language
right :)

Óskar