Re: verb-subject agreement
From: | Jan van Steenbergen <ijzeren_jan@...> |
Date: | Monday, April 22, 2002, 6:27 |
--- Andrew Strader <guido@...> wrote:
> Are there natural languages which exhibit subject-verb agreement in which
> it happens that when the subject consists of a pronoun and a noun, the
> pronoun can be elided, making an apparent disagreement between the verb
> and the subject? Such a language would demonstrate the following structure:
>
> "John and I go."
> John[NOM] go[1st.pl.]
> John we-go.
A similar thing is quite common in the Slavonic languages.
If you want to say "You and me" in Russian, you say:
"My s toboj" ("We with you")
In Polish, you can say (provided you're a woman):
"By³ymy wczoraj z kole¿ank¹ w kinie."
"We were yesterday with a friend in the cinema."
I once had a Polish girl friend, who did exactly the same thing in Dutch.
She just couldn't get used to the fact, that we have a different way of
saying this. Very often it happened, that people answered her with the
question, who this mysterious third person might be...
Jan
=====
"You know, I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought,
wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that
happen to us come because we actually deserve them? So, now I take great
comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe." --- J.
Michael Straczynski
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