Re: Just between me and you and the gatepost

"Paul J Kriha" <paul.nospam.kriha@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote...
John Atkinson <johnacko@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote...

Following on the recent "It is I" thread, I've been thinking about
coordinate expressions "A and B", where at least one of A or B is 1st or
2nd person. There's not much on it that I can find -- most grammars of
specific languages (at least, the ones I have) don't seem to mention it.

The following "rules" seem like they might be relevant:

1,. Order of components:
(a) "Relevance" hierarchy: 1P before 2P before 3P
(b) "Politeness" heirarchy: 2P before 3P before 1P

2. Form of 1P and 2P:
(a) They have the same pronoun form as they would when used by
themselves, immediately next to the verb. In particular, nominative
when the NP is subject, accusative when it's object, etc.
(b) A special "emphatic" form is used, either undeclinable (like French
<moi>), or declining the way nouns do (as opposed to pronouns).

Example: Yoruba (omitting tones, and writing E for e-dot):

emi ati KEhinde lo ki i, 'me and KEhinde went to greet him'
*KEhinde ati emi lo ki i
*mo ati KEhindi lo ki i
emi at'iwo lo ki i, 'me and you went to greet him'
*mo ati E lo ki i

where emi = 1P(emph), mo = 1P(nom), iwo = 2P(emph), E = 2P(nom). That
is, Yoruba follows 1(a) and 2(b), and 1(b) and 2(a) are apparently
completely ungrammatical.

In Czech I found the following:

In contemporary Czech, the discussed pronouns will always be
in nominative, the verb will conform to the object.
The word order is free and is not governed by your categories
(a) or (b). I don't think the categories are relevant/applicable
to Czech.

To jsem ja' = It am I
Ja' jsem to = I am it
To jses^ ty = It are you
Ty jses^ to = You are it
To je on = It is he
On je to = He is it

What about
? Ja' (be) on = I am he
? On (be) ja' = He is me
in answer to "Who's the idiot who did this?", perhaps? (This is irrelevant to the point under discussion, I'm just curious.)

ja a ty zustaneme doma (1(a) and 2(a))
bratr a ja se uc^ime (1(b) and 2(a))

I don't understand why this particular one is (b) and not (a).
The Czech word order is significantly freer than English. It serves
different purpose and carries different type of information than
it does in English.
"ja' a bratr" is no less polite than "bratr a ja'". Depending on the
question being answered the word order serves to stress
either "bratr" or "ja'". Or it may (subliminally) imply who is with
whom. Is my brother with me or am I with my brother?

BTW, if "bratr" is not a member of some religious group or
sport club the sentence is more likely to include "mu'j", e.g.
"mu'j bratr a ja'..." (my brother and I...)

tvuj otec a ty jste si podobni (? and 2(a))

There's no difference between "tvu'j otec" (your father)
and "ty" or "on" or whoever.

which isn't consistent.

???

I meant, "consistent with either of the order 'rules' I proposed".

Is there a different ordering rule in this
language, or are any orders equally OK?

Ah, as far as you are concerned they are all equally OK.
However, the different word orders carry the kind of information
not discussed in this thread.

Yep. Czech is (more or less) one of those languages where word order isn't important in marking grammatical relations, so what you say makes sense. I'm glad that when I was looking for examples, it so happened that the first I came across was one of these languages, thus exposing the fact that neither 1(a) nor 1(b) need apply to fluid-word-order languages.

Yoruba, of course, is one of the languages at the opposite end of this continuum -- even more fixed-order than English, I think.

What's the situation in other languages around the world? Chinese,
Arabic, Hindi ...?

(all of which, I believe, are pretty strict fixed-word-order languages)

Are the less-preferred options completely ungrammatical in these
languages, or just less common? Is there different rules for different
varieties of the language, in particular formal vs colloquial registers?

John.

.

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