Re: person marking on relative pronouns

From: "Joe" <joe@...>
Sent: Saturday, April 08, 2006 8:18 PM

> René Uittenbogaard wrote:
>>Gott, der Du unser Vater bist, ..
>>God.VOC who you.2SG our father are.2SG, ..
>>
>>This excerpt from German has both a relative pronoun and a
>>personal
>>pronoun in the subclause. Not an ugly solution at all,
>>IMHO.
>
> The question is, would Germans generally use that kind of
> construction?  Not being a native speaker, I couldn't tell
> you.  The example you give seems to be something of a
> mangling of the traditional Lord's Prayer - "Unser vater,
> der du bist in Himmel".
Um, you can say that, but to me at least it sounds rather
formal. Nevertheless there does not come another solution to
my mind. However, you wouldn't expect such a sentence in
spoken language. Anyway, the version of the Lord's Prayer
*I* know starts with "Vater Unser im Himmel" ('Father our in
the heaven') usually, though putting the possessive pronoun
after a noun is also strange and may be regarded as poetic
language.

Carsten

--
"Miranayam kepauarà naranoaris." (Kalvin nay Hobbes)
Pinena, Yangtim 8, 2315, ea 01:00:28 pd