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Opinions wanted: person of vocative

From:Roger Mills <romilly@...>
Date:Tuesday, July 1, 2003, 15:17
Mark J. Reed wrote:
>The only way a vocative can be the subject of a verb is indirectly,
by being the antecedent of a relative pronoun. Or by inserting the personal pronoun- "Mommy dearest, you have made my life Hell" Clearly a vocative, since it's direct address, requires 2nd person. It seems that modern English finds it awkward to use the correct verb form in a following relative clause (it sounds _very_ pedantic)- "Mommy dearest, who have (has) made my life Hell, I never want to see you again!" Let's face it, the KJV Our Father has had to be modrunized. (BTW I learned an even more archaic version-Our Father, which art in heaven...."
>The Spanish paternoster does, by the way, use the second person
with the relative pronoun: "Padre nuestro, que estás en el cielo . . ." As does the Latin version, German versions I have seen, and IIRC the Old English version. When I tranlated it into Kash, I simply avoided the issue: paramamim ri neleç... 'our honored father in the heavens....' I have a feeling that if the construction can occur in Kash, they would probably insert a pronoun- A karumbi, hat re mende haçakrum havembi, te maraça. Oh lord-my, you REL have you-destroy family/acc/my, you/dat I-curse "Oh my lord, who (have/has) destroyed my family, I curse you!" (spoken to an evil ruler, not to The Lord) But it sounds very formal and bookish, and could be rephrased as 2 conjoined sentences.

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John Leland <leland@...>