Re: OT: Latin subject-verb agreement

I would have no problem with "Ai, who is" - I thought we were
discussing grammar, not the decoding of audio streams.
   In any case, I would of course readily understand "I, who is",
although processing it may take a millisecond or two longer than
processing "I, who am".  I'm just unlikely to emit it naturally
myself.


On 12/13/07, Jeff Rollin <jeff.rollin@...> wrote:
> In the last episode, (On Thursday 13 December 2007 02:19:45), T. A. McLeay
> wrote:
> > MorphemeAddict@WMCONNECT.COM wrote:
> > > In a message dated 12/12/2007 7:59:40 PM Central Standard Time,
> > >
> > > conlang@CASSOWARY.ORG writes:
> > >> Just like "I" isn't exactly the nominative first person singular
> > >> pronoun, "am" isn't exactly the first person singular form of "to be".
> > >
> > > But they are!
> > > What am I missing?
> >
> > They're special. I don't know all the details, but in English you say
> > things like "It's me", whereas decent languages with proper nominative
> > first person singular pronouns say "It's I", or "Me and John went for a
> > run" or "Jack beat John and I". Similar bugs can be found in all the
> > English pronouns ("Us English speakers don't use pronouns properly all
> > the time", "Latin speakers did case better than we English speakers").
> >
> > --
> > Tristan.
>
> Actually, I find Spanish much more logical in this respect than languages
> which use either nominative or objective pronouns in this case. In Spanish
> for example one says "Soy yo" "I am I" or, more grammatically (in English)
> "I
> am me". I also find phrases like "Los ingleses somos..."  "The English [we]
> are..." much more logically appealing than "The English [implied 'they']
> are"
>
> --
> "Please understand that there are small
> European principalities devoted to debating
> Tcl vs. Perl as a tourist attraction."
>
>                             -- Cameron Laird
>

--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>