Re: 1st person vocative (was: Language universal?)

On Fri, Feb 09, 2001 at 02:22:50PM -0500, Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
[snip]
> Er...I sometimes address myself, but I use the *third* person--this being
> not particularly uncommon in Korean, and I guess the habit carried over
> into my English-speaking.  (Too bad reminding myself of things is
> generally not, hmm, very effective.)  And then sometimes I slip from that
> into the 2nd or 1st.  But probably saying things like "*Good* Yoon Ha.
> *Don't* forget your socks."
Hehe. I frequently address myself in the second person, eg. when I did
something stupid, i'd exclaim to myself, "you stupid! whatcha do that
for?!" Or, when I'm thinking, "what do you think is the best way to go
about this?" I also tend to use the first person *plural* -- "let's do
this now". Or, "let's see... how do we do this again?"

And when I'm talking about myself, sometimes I use the first person
singular to refer to the speaker, and the second person singular for the
listener.

> (And yes, it's fairly easy to tell I'm weird.  =^p)
Well, relative to some (most?) of us here, you're quite normal ;-)


T

--
Right now I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time. I think I've
forgotten this before.