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In reply to:
Which of those rules seems inelegant to you?
None of them. Those rules seem elegant to me. Simple as straw and as elegant. But I've internalized them and they are as familiar as family. Don't mean to imply here that my family is simple.
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re:All pronouns can be re-replaced with the noun they replaced, except the grump of a pronoun, "I"
well, as you pointed out, I can be replaced, i can say "Of troy has blond hair"-- but once i replace I with my name, I also have change the verb...
Using this form of address, (refering to yourself, using your own name and the third person verb form is illeitst.. (il eet ist) it sound like elitist! not just the word elitist, but speaking in this form sound like you consider your self elite! it sounds self centered, and egotistic. (of course that is just my opinion!) the form is generally not used (and who knows, that too could change) because my opinion, is shared-- many think the style to be one used by self centered pompous idiots -- and in movies and television, this style is often employed as a short hand to learn a persons 'character'.
Can you use "Name (thirdperson verb)" and not be egotistic? Sure! but you're still going to sound that way!
i suppose once or twice in a live time, it is the clearest form, but for the most part, when talking about yourself, you use I.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Dear of troy,
Where did you find the pronunciation of the adjective form of illeism? I found the noun form in two places on onelook.com, but no adjective form or pronunciation.
Thanks for letting me in on your reference.
WW
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> illeitst
I'm going out on a limb here and guessing that that's an exclusive ot spelling (and pronunciation). <grinace>
edit: it turns out that illeism is a nonce-word coined by Coleridge from L. ille, that man, he; after egoism. it's pronounced IL-i-iz-em, so (best guess) IL-i-est.
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old hand
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old hand
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WordWind, I think I see what Ryan is getting at.
It does seem funny that "I am..." is proper grammar, until you re-replace the pronoun with the noun it was originally replacing (!); that is, you substitute "WordWind" for "I". Then, even though you may still be talking about yourself, the verb changes to third person singular! Why should it - you're still talking about yourself! (Just pointing out the failure in logic here and waiting for Faldage to make some dry remark about logic and English being mutually exclusive...)
I find the example of "Jeremy don't want to" very interesting, and that construction is possibly more logical than "Jeremy doesn't want to" when talking about oneself. Jeremy's logic must have gone something like this:
"I don't want to" -> I'd like to make this more emphatic, I think I'll use my name instead of I, but I'll keep don't because I'm still referring to I here, and that's the verb that goes with the concept of I -> "Jeremy don't want to"
So somehow Jeremy forms that sentence from a deeper understanding of the concept of I in the language. He thinks that the verb form don't, pointing to himself, is more important than the pronoun used to do the pointing. Interesting, hey?
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waiting for Faldage to make some dry remark about logic and English being mutually exclusive
I wouldn't go that far. I do think that logic can be pushed too far in attempts to analyze any natural language. I also think that RK's question deserves some serious discussion. Unfortunately*, I am not able to spend much time on it right now.
*Or maybe, fortunately.
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Much of the problem here seems to be that we practically never use anything but pronouns in first and second person. There's the additional matter of our having conflated all present tense, indicative conjugations except the third person singular in almost all verbs. In this case it means that we expect a single name, e.g., Ryan, to go with a third person singular verb and it doesn't sound right if we hear it some other way. That this is approximately the same argument that gives us nucular for nuclear may be dismissed by some, but it does fit with Safire's Law, "if it sounds funny, the hell with it." Still, it seems somehow to go against the simple notion that a pronoun is a word used in the place of a noun or noun phrase. To put it in another context, which is correct?
A) It is I who is the House Fool,
or
2) It is I who am the House Fool?
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