Re: Ellipsis (was: Re: Italian Particles)

Raymond Brown scripsit:

> A pedantic 'rule' - haven't observed it for many years.  Don't recall ever
> being misunderstood.
Are quite intelligible, yes, but then is intelligible to say "Me see she",
(means same as "I see her", not "she sees me", BTW), too.
Nevertheless ungrammatical, and no native speaker likely to produce
in ordinary speech.  Imperatives a different question
altogether, as far as subjects concerned, naturally.

Basically Ray talking funny.

> Can, if the context is clear.  And whenever I bought a coffee on my last
> trip to the US, I was always given the command 'Enjoy!' as it was handed to
> me.  This custom is now spreading this side of the pond also.
IMHO borrowing from Yiddish.  Another possible borrowing: use of "a fruit"
for native form "a piece of fruit".  "Have a fruit" now good English,
but a century ago ungrammatical.

(Got much practice talking thus after reading Heinlein's _The Moon Is
A Harsh Mistress_ 25 years ago.  Book entirely written in mildly
Russianized English; conhistorically due to settlement of Moon by
Anglo-Russian condominium, in our timeline presumably due to H's
trip to Soviet Union sans Russian, thus listening to many interpreters
of doubtless varying quality.)

--
John Cowan                                   cowan@ccil.org
       I am a member of a civilization. --David Brin