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

On Fri, Feb 09, 2001 at 09:08:52PM -0000, Lars Henrik Mathiesen wrote:
[...]
> This reminds me of the style used on MU*s (realtime multiplayer text
> games): By convention, all input from a player must start with the
> name of the character played. And if people don't want to bother with
> direct speech, you see stuff like
>
>        Joe says happily, "Tombraider 4 on PS/2 will really rule."
>
>        Bob chuckles and didn't know there was going to be a 4.
>
>        Joe oopses. He said too much already and will shut up now.
I wonder if any real study has been done on this kind of "speech." It seems
to show some interesting features not found in spoken English (or usual
written English), such as using an eventive verb (chuckles) and a stative verb
(didn't know -- and note it's even in a different tense!) in the same
sentence, separated by a conjunction. But then eventive verbs seemingly aren't
often used in the simple present in English anyway, the present progressive
being preferred (or with things such as chuckling, just DOING it instead of
saying it).

> This is unlike the style on IRC and 'chat rooms,' where the
> participants name is prefixed to all statements. The same exchange
> would look like this:
>
>        Joe> tombraider 4 on ps2 will really rule *smiles happily*
>
>        Bob> *chuckle* i didnt know there was going to be a 4
>
>        Joe> oops! i said too much already... i'll shut up now
This contradicts what I just said about IRC in another post. Perhaps your
experience with chat is different, but (as I said) nickname prefixation of
the type "* Bob chuckles and didn't know there was going to be a 4" is very
common IME. But then chat systems other than IRC sometimes don't have that
possibility, so people make do with :: or ** or <> or other ways of marking
actions.



[Note: The * used in "* Bob" is not to mark the sentence as hypothetical, but
is a character put before the nickname on IRC.]

--
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