Re: THEORY: English Pronouns (was Re: THEORY: Ergativity and polypersonalism)

On Sun, 23 Jan 2005 17:58:15 -0500, Rob Haden <magwich78@...> wrote:
> On Sun, 23 Jan 2005 23:02:50 +1100, Tristan McLeay
> <conlang@...> wrote:
>
> >I'd describe it as stylistic clash: similar to 'the person to who it
> >happened' or 'the person whom it happened to'.
>
> The relative pronoun in the first example should also be 'whom', from what
> I understand.
And the pronoun in the second example "should" be 'who', otherwise you
have the aforementioned stylistic clash.


====================================================

On Sun, 23 Jan 2005 18:00:50 -0500, Rob Haden <magwich78@...> wrote:
> I think that if native English speakers were to pick one form only for each
> pronoun, they'd be more comfortable using the accusative forms than the
> nominative forms.
I think this is what happened in Italian, where the third-person
masculine/feminine singular and third-person plural personal pronouns
are usually "lui"/"lei" and "loro" (both originally accusative) in
colloquial speech, even for the nominative (which "should be"
egli/ella and essi/esse).

For the polite form, I think this is universal: always "Lei", never "Ella".

See also http://www.manuscritto.it/Lui_lei_essi_loro.html and
http://www.learnitaly.com/italiano_parlato.htm .

Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
Watch the Reply-To!

Reply