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

On Fri, Feb 09, 2001 at 03:31:06PM -0500, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> 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?"
I do that too. I also sometimes address myself as "me," though only
mentally, not out loud. But the "we" thing is interesting -- I think that
might be the reason why God in the Bible is always saying things like "Let
us go down..."; it sounds to me like a 1st person desiderative/imperative
type of thing, and I've never heard of a language that actually had verb
forms for 1st person *singular*, so the plural would fill in. But I could
be completely wrong.

Another interesting thing about self-reference and address comes from
spending too much time on IRC (Internet Relay Chat). For those who don't
know, IRC has a "/me" command which works like this:

I type:
 /me waves!
Other people see:
 * Rakko waves!

So in my case at least, I notice myself using /me a lot where I would just
say "I" in normal speech, as in "/me went to this TERRIBLE movie last
night." Now I mentioned spending too much time on IRC; I think I must be,
because I sometimes *almost* say things such as "me is hungry" in regular
speech. That is, I get the impulse to say that, but luckily I usually catch
it before I speak and revert to "I." But still, the impulse is there, so it
must be a somewhat ingrained habit...

--
Eric Christopherson / *Aiworegs Ghristobhorosyo
Conlang code:
CU !lh:m cN:R:S:G a+ y n2d:1d !R* A-- E L* N1 Id:m k- ia- p+ m- o+ P-- d* b+++ lainesco

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