[Ads-l] go = urinate, transitive; shishi (1974?)

[Laurence Horn]

> On Nov 19, 2017, at 2:33 PM, Barretts Mail <mail.barretts at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> The Oxford Living Dictionaries (https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/go <https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/go>) and Wiktionary (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/go <https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/go>) have the meaning of “urinate/defecate” as only intransitive.
> 
> But “go pee/poo” must surely be transitive, with a limited range of objects meaning urine or feces.

Not sure I agree.  “Pee/poo” doesn’t really satisfy the tests for direct objects:

*Poo was gone by the baby.
*Pee was gone by the beer-drinkers.

It doesn’t even seem to pattern as a noun phrase:

*What I need to go is pee/poo.
*The pee that I went got on my shoes.

“go pee” and “go poo” seem to be complex intransitive verbs or serial verbs, rather than transitive verbs + objects.

I’m not even sure I can inflect “go” in this sequence, although they’re easy to find on the web:  
?The baby went poo.
?You went pee on my shoes.

For those who find such examples unacceptable “go pee” may be closer to “go fetch”, “go take a nap”, “go fuck yourself”, or other serial verb sequences which also don’t inflect, although I concede that “The baby’s going poo” is a bit better (grammatically at least) than *The dog’s going fetch.


LH



> 
> An alternative for pee found in Hawai'i is “shishi” borrowed from Japanese (search for “shishi” on https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%B0%BF#Japanese <https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%B0%BF#Japanese>).
> 
> According to “Hawaiian Culture: Pidgin Phrases you Should Know” (https://www.liveyouraloha.com/hawaiian-culture-pidgin-phrases-know/ <https://www.liveyouraloha.com/hawaiian-culture-pidgin-phrases-know/>) by Jodie Oaks, "I gotta go shishi!” is a polite way to say “that you have to go pee.” The article also notes that children often use it; “shishi” is a child’s word in Japanese (https://www.weblio.jp/content/%E3%81%97%E3%81%97 <https://www.weblio.jp/content/%E3%81%97%E3%81%97> in Japanese).
> 
> Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_loanwords_in_Hawaii <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_loanwords_in_Hawaii>) also has “go/make shishi”. The word “make” would seem to come from the Japanese suru (する), since shishi(o) suru is common. “Suru” is a dummy verb with thousands of uses; although my Mac Japanese-English dictionary does have “make” as one of the meanings, it doesn’t seem to be a general way to translate “suru”. As purely idle speculation, I wonder if the “make” in “make shishi” comes by way of Portuguese or some other language.
> 
> The Hawaiian Culture article and Wikipedia both talk about “five-four-four" as a way to say “go shishi” in Hawaiian English. The number “five” can be pronounced as “go” and “four” as “shi”. That Wikipedia page calls it a Japanese kanji joke, but it comes from a systematic way of pronouncing numbers to make mnemonics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_wordplay#Numeric_substitution <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_wordplay#Numeric_substitution>).
> 
> 1. 2005 
> http://bit.ly/2AZUGVb <http://bit.ly/2AZUGVb>
> Da Kine Dictionary: Da Hawai'i Community Pidgin Dictionary Projeck
> by Lee A. Tonouchi
> 
> cites a 1974 work by David Hiromoto, McKinley
> 
> ——
> shishi pee or the act of peeing. I drank too much beer so now I gotta go shishi. See also 5 4 4, sheesh.
> ——
> 
> 2.. 2000
> “Encountering Sorrow” in _The Quietest Singing_
> By Darrell H. Y. Lum
> Edited by Darrell H. Y. Lum, Joseph Stanton, Estelle Enoki
> 
> ——
> Or when Sakamoto like play wit us, his favorite team is Dicky Wee (we call him Pee Wee when he _go shishi_), Calvin Hee…
> ——
> 
> 3. 17 May 2007
> http://www.kiene.com/forums/showthread.php?11028-Tough%E9r-day <http://www.kiene.com/forums/showthread.php?11028-Tough%E9r-day>
> by Otaru
> 
> ——
> I hope you went shishi on the man-o-war sting.
> —— 
> 
> 3. 2008 (Google-dated)
> https://books.google.ca/books?id=OwpKAQAAIAAJ&dq=%22go+shishi%22&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=shishi <https://books.google.ca/books?id=OwpKAQAAIAAJ&dq=%22go+shishi%22&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=shishi>
> West's Hawaii reports: cases decided in the Supreme Court, Intermediate Court of Appeals, Volume 117
> 
> ——
> … [S]o extreme mental emotional distress is not about losing control in the sense that you might go shishi in your pants or that you might fall on the floor because you can’t walk anymore.
> —— 
> 
> 4. 5 November 2009
> http://hemomi.blogspot.ca/2009/11/hohono.html <http://hemomi.blogspot.ca/2009/11/hohono.html> 
> by Llana
> 
> ——
> Or you know that strong mimi (urine) smell of a small child's shorts that have since dried up but you KNOW he went shishi and just won't admit it?
> ——
> 
> 5. Comment in response to a post on 8 August 2016
> https://www.instagram.com/p/BI4NkrCgWED/ <https://www.instagram.com/p/BI4NkrCgWED/>
> comment by kimmu1988 
> 
> —— 
> Went shishi part was so funny😂😂😂
> —— 
> 
> Benjamin Barrett
> Formerly of Seattle, WA
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org