(I simply can't resist . . .) Alexander Hollins wrote:
> One, generally, reffering to someone in the third person when they are in > the room, as it were, is considered rude. Hollins will have to get used to being referred to in the third person, because Rothwell often does this, and has even been known to refer to himself in the third person, even in the privacy of his own home with friends and family, albeit in Japanese which (as it happens) does not have person or number, or gender or articles for that matter. (These deficits have long puzzled linguists. E. H. Jorden speculated that Izanami *et al.* held a meeting at the beginning of history and decided they did need these constructs, while a more recent analysis, based on the work of Dave Barry, suggests that when ancient Japanese migrated from the South Pacific, these parts of speech may have been accidentally lost. *) Hollins should be thankful that English does not include causative passive verb conjugations. And oh by the way, that's linguistics, which *is* science, you betcha, so don't even start. - Jed * D. Barry: "Hawaii's Official State Motto is Wai'iu'a'iou'lih'aaaine," but nobody has any idea what it means. . . . The Hawaiian language is quite unusual because when the original Polynesians came in their canoes, most of their consonants were washed overboard in a storm, and they arrived here with almost nothing but vowels."
