Problem: CHAPTER XXX

THE NEW WELL--CONCLUSION

Carson Davenport was halfway up the steps of the car when Jake Tate and another man hauled him backward to the station platform.

"They've got him!" exclaimed Jack, as he and his cousins, along with the rest of the gathering crowd, came closer.

"Hi! Hi! Let me alone!" yelled Davenport. "Don't shoot! What is the meaning of this, anyway?"

"You know well enough what it means!" bellowed Tate, still clutching him by the arm. "You come back here. You are not going to take that train or any other just yet."

"And you're not going to carry off that bag, either," put in Jackson, as he wrenched the Gladstone away.

By this time the crowd completely surrounded Carson Davenport, and the pistols which had been drawn were speedily thrust out of sight. The oil well promoter was pushed in the direction of the little railroad station, and in the midst of this excitement the train pulled out.

"What's the rumpus about, anyway?" exclaimed one man in the crowd.

"Never mind what it's about," broke in Tate hastily. "This is our affair."

"That's right--maybe we had better keep it to ourselves," muttered Jackson.

"I don't believe in shielding him," cried one man who had chased Davenport and who wore several soldier's medals on his vest. "He's a swindler, and it's best everybody knew it. He was on the point of lighting out for parts unknown with all the money that was put into his oil wells up on the Spell ranch."
1. Who was chased?
2. What's the name of the ranch?
3. Who pursued Carson?
4. Who stopped him?
5. Anyone else?
6. Does Jake have any relatives?
7. What are they?
8. Who were they with?
9. And who was gathered there?
10. Were they far away?
11. Did Carson get on board?
12. What did they take from him?
13. And what is that?
14. Did somebody promote something?
15. What?
16. Did the locomotive leave?
17. Where were the oil rigs?
18. Where were the military emblems found?
19. Where were they?
20. Was Davenport trying to escape?
Answer: 1. Carson Davenport
2. Spell ranch
3. one man
4. Jake Tate
5. another man
6. yes
7. cousins
8. Jack
9. a crowd
10. no
11. no
12. a Gladstone
13. a bag,
14. yes
15. oil well
16. yes
17. on the Spell ranch
18. medals
19. on the soldier's vest
20. No

Problem: Case is a special grammatical category of a noun, pronoun, adjective, participle or numeral whose value reflects the grammatical function performed by that word in a phrase, clause, or sentence. In some languages, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, determiners, participles, prepositions, numerals, articles and their modifiers take different inflected forms depending on what case they are in. As a language evolves, cases can merge (for instance, in Ancient Greek, the locative case merged with the dative), a phenomenon formally called syncretism.

English has largely lost its case system, although personal pronouns still have three cases that are simplified forms of the nominative, accusative and genitive cases: subjective case (I, you, he, she, it, we, they, who, whoever), objective case (me, you, him, her, it, us, them, whom, whomever) and possessive case (my, mine; your, yours; his; her, hers; its; our, ours; their, theirs; whose; whosever). Forms such as "I", "he" and "we" are used for the subject ("I kicked the ball"), whereas forms such as "me", "him" and "us" are used for the object ("John kicked me").

Languages such as Sanskrit, Ancient Greek, Latin, Armenian, Hungarian, Tibetan, Czech, Slovak, Turkish, Tamil, Romanian, Russian, Polish, Serbo-Croatian, Estonian, Finnish, Icelandic, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Basque, Esperanto and the majority of Caucasian languages have extensive case systems, with nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and determiners all inflecting (usually by means of different suffixes) to indicate their case. The number of cases differs between languages: German and Icelandic have four; Turkish, Latin and Russian each have at least six; Armenian, Czech, Polish, Serbian, Croatian, Ukrainian, and Lithuanian have seven; Sanskrit has eight; Estonian and Finnish have fifteen, Hungarian has eighteen and Tsez has sixty-four.
1. What is case?
2. Is there a case system in English?
3. Does Esperanto have an extensive case system?
4. Between languages does the number of cases stay the same?
5. How many does German and Icelandic have?
6. What about Turkish, Latin and Russian?
7. What about Tsez?
8. What are forms such as me, him and us used for?
9. What about I, he, and we?
10. How many cases do personal pronouns still have in English?
Answer:
1. a special grammatical category of a noun, pronoun, adjective, participle or numeral whose value reflects the grammatical function performed by that word in a phrase, clause, or sentence. In some languages, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, determiners, participles, prepositions, numerals, articles and their modifiers take different inflected forms depending on what case they are in
2. it has largely lost its case system
3. yes
4. no
5. four
6. they each have at least six
7. sixty-four
8. the object
9. they are used for the subject
10. three