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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