scholarly journals Refunctionalization. First-Person Plural of the Verb Haber in the History of Spanish

Languages ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 6
Author(s):  
Axel Hernández Díaz
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
First Person ◽  
Person Plural ◽  
Existential Meaning ◽  
History Of ◽  
First Person Plural

In this paper, the first-person plural diachronic behaviour of the verb form habemos with an existential value is analysed to explore its recovery in current Spanish as a case of refunctionalization. The latter is understood as timely cooptation of a form, which begins with any of the form’s characteristics. It is known that the cooptation’s origin might be directly, indirectly or not at all related to the previous or original use of the form. Results shown here are based on the analysis of constructions in which the first-person plural verb form of haber is used with a possessive meaning, as an auxiliary, and as existential between the 13th and 21st century. While grammaticalization theory pays attention to processes that culminate with grammatical enrichment of words or constructions, the verb form habemos with an existential meaning does not show that behaviour. It is explained as a case of refunctionalization or, at least, specialization.

Ital. eravassimo e altre forme verbali in -vassimo

2019 ◽  
Vol 135 (2) ◽  
pp. 583-596
Author(s):  
Vincenzo D’Angelo
Keyword(s):  
18Th Century ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
The Internet ◽  
First Person ◽  
Person Plural ◽  
History Of ◽  
First Person Plural

Abstract This article aims to reconstruct the history of eravassimo (first-person plural of the imperfect indicative of essere) and other Italian verbal forms ending in -vassimo. These rare verbal forms began to appear in grammars and dictionaries in the 17th century and in some literary and non-literary texts in the 18th century. Some examples of the verbal forms in -vassimo can still be found in texts produced in recent years on the Internet.

First-Person Plural

Theater ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 5-19
Author(s):  
Daniel Sack
Keyword(s):  
Performance Art ◽  
The Self ◽  
First Person ◽  
Person Plural ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Green Screen ◽  
First Person Plural ◽  
Self Reference

In Daniel Sack’s discussion of Nicola Gunn’s dramatic oeuvre, he finds a through line running between her works—one of self-reference and autofiction, a kind of playful knowledge of the self. In tracing this affinity between her pieces, in particular In the Sans Hotel, In Spite of Myself, Piece for Person and Ghetto Blaster, and Green Screen, Sack identifies the ways in which Gunn’s work speaks to both a contemporary moment in theater and the history of performance art, acknowledging the different baggage of the forms she references while coyly and fluently crossing between them. Sack sees in Gunn’s work the creation of heterotopias, places that open out onto an elsewhere, toward realities that simultaneously exist outside of the world and connect its disparate cultural manifestations together, from identity to ethics, politics to performance.

The Plural of Us

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bonnie Costello
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Wallace Stevens ◽  
Elizabeth Bishop ◽  
First Person ◽  
Person Plural ◽  
George Oppen ◽  
History Of ◽  
Taxonomic Approach ◽  
First Person Plural

This is the first book to focus on the poet's use of the first-person plural voice—poetry's “we.” Closely exploring the work of W. H. Auden, the book uncovers the trove of thought and feeling carried in this small word. While lyric has long been associated with inwardness and a voice saying “I,” “we” has hardly been noticed, even though it has appeared throughout the history of poetry. Reading for this pronoun in its variety and ambiguity, the book's author explores the communal function of poetry—the reasons, risks, and rewards of the first-person plural. The author adopts a taxonomic approach to her subject, considering “we” from its most constricted to its fully unbounded forms. The author also takes a historical perspective, following Auden's interest in the full range of “the human pluralities” in a time of particular pressure for and against the collective. Examples from many other poets—including Walt Whitman, T. S. Eliot, Elizabeth Bishop, and Wallace Stevens—arise throughout the book, and the final chapter offers a consideration of how contemporary writers find form for what George Oppen called “the meaning of being numerous.” Connecting insights to philosophy of language and to recent work in concepts of community, the book shows how poetry raises vital questions—literary and social—about how we speak of our togetherness.

A deixis emocional em português europeu contemporâneo: alguns contributos

2019 ◽  
pp. 225-235
Author(s):  
Ana Cristina Macário Lopes
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Data ◽  
First Person ◽  
Person Plural ◽  
First Person Plural

This paper is a contribution to the description of the structures that express emotional deixis, in European contemporary Portuguese. The analysis of our empirical data show that, in Portuguese, demonstratives are not the only category that encodes emotional deictic meaning; possessives and first person plural display the same function, in some contexts. It is also discussed the semantic bleaching of the deictic space adverbs cá and lá and it is argued that it can only be described and explained in illocutionary terms, and not in the framework of emotional deixis.

Colloquial features in Word Englishes

2013 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 479-505 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Collins ◽  
Xinyue Yao
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
American English ◽  
World Englishes ◽  
Evolutionary Status ◽  
First Person ◽  
Functional Interpretation ◽  
Person Plural ◽  
World English ◽  
First Person Plural ◽  
Grammatical Change

A powerful discourse-pragmatic agent of grammatical change in English since the mid-twentieth century has been the increasing acceptance of colloquialism. Little is known, however, about its influence on grammatical developments in regional varieties of World English other than the two inner circle ‘supervarieties’, British and American English. This paper reports findings from a corpus-based study of three grammatical categories known to be undergoing a colloquialism-related rise in contemporary English, across a range of registers in ten World Englishes: quasi-modals (have to, have got to, be going to, want to), get-passives, and first person plural inclusive let’s. In each case comparisons are drawn with non-colloquial variants: modals (must, should, will, shall), be-passives, and let us. Subsequent functional interpretation of the data is used to explore the effect upon the quantitative patterns identified of the phenomenon of colloquialism and of further factors with which it interacts (including Americanism, prescriptivism, and evolutionary status).

Are we visible? An interdisciplinary data-based study of self-mention in research articles

2016 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohsen Khedri
Keyword(s):  
Applied Linguistics ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Environmental Engineering ◽  
Research Articles ◽  
First Person ◽  
Person Plural ◽  
Rhetorical Strategy ◽  
Original Contribution ◽  
Subjective Strategies ◽  
First Person Plural

AbstractResearch articles have often materialized through the use of impersonal objective strategies viz. abstract rhetors, passive constructions, and nominalizations. However, intrusive or subjective strategies, such as self-mentions, appear to integrate impersonal structures. As a rhetorical strategy to explicitly portray authorial selves, self-mentions help writers to project themselves into the discourse by marketing themselves and demarcating their original contribution to the field. Here, an interdisciplinary approach was adopted to examine explicit authorial presence in a comparable corpus of 40 research articles in applied linguistics, psychology, environmental engineering, and chemistry by taking into consideration: (i) the frequency of using exclusive first person plural pronouns (

Inclusive and exclusive uses of we in four American textbooks for multicultural teacher education

2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (5) ◽  
pp. 625-647
Author(s):  
Baburhan Uzum ◽  
Bedrettin Yazan ◽  
Ali Fuad Selvi
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
Multicultural Education ◽  
Teacher Educators ◽  
Positioning Theory ◽  
Language Teachers ◽  
First Person ◽  
Person Plural ◽  
Multicultural Teacher Education ◽  
First Person Plural ◽  
Multicultural Teacher

This study analyses four American multicultural teacher education textbooks for instances of inclusive and exclusive representations through the use of first person plural pronouns (i.e. we, us, our, ours). Positioning theory is used as a theoretical framework to examine the textbook authors’ uses of first person plural pronouns and to understand how these pronouns perform reflexive and interactive positioning and fluidly (re)negotiate and (re)delineate the borders between ‘self’ and ‘other.’ The findings suggest that first person plural pronouns are used extensively in the focal textbooks to refer to such groups as authors, Americans, humans, teachers, and teacher educators. Expressing differing levels of ambiguity in interpretation, these pronouns play significant roles in the discursive representations of inclusivity and exclusivity across topics of multicultural education. This study implicates that language teachers should use criticality and reflexivity when approaching exclusionary discourses and representations that neglect the particularities of individuals from different cultures.

Did Paul Really Think He Wasn’t Going to Die?

2019 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-59
Author(s):  
J. Andrew Doole
Keyword(s):  
First Person ◽  
Person Plural ◽  
First Person Plural

AbstractIt is often claimed that Paul expected the Lord to return in glory within his lifetime, based in part on the text of 1 Thess 4:13–18. Those who have a theological interest in denying Paul’s mistaken optimism have to bend over backwards to explain why this wasn’t the case. The use of the First Person Plural in this passage however may be indicative that Paul was not actually making this claim for himself at all. Both the content and the context suggest rather that Paul, Silvanus and Timothy were providing the Thessalonian Christians with a “soundbite” for mutual and reciprocal encouragement when they met as a community. Indeed, Paul may have used First Person Plural soundbites throughout his ministry.

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