[Corpora-List] Frequency of the pronoun I

[Rich Cooper]

Dear Alon,

 

Thanks for your clarification.  By "subjectivity"
I merely meant the view of a situation as seen
from the observer's point of view - the "I", "me",
"my", "mine" suite of words, regardless of what
the "I" reports.  Whether what the "I" sees is
emotional, factual, or tinged with motives of any
kind, is for analysts to determine based on the
text as a whole.  

 

HTH,

-Rich

 

Sincerely,

Rich Cooper

EnglishLogicKernel.com

Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com

9 4 9 \ 5 2 5 - 5 7 1 2

  _____  

From: alischinsky at gmail.com
[mailto:alischinsky at gmail.com] On Behalf Of Alon
Lischinsky
Sent: Wednesday, September 14, 2011 1:32 AM
To: Rich Cooper
Cc: corpora at uib.no
Subject: Re: [Corpora-List] Frequency of the
pronoun I

 

Richard,

> It is striking how clearly your figures indicate
how well that single measure works as an
indication of corpus character.  Thanks for a
useful metric.  It might even be used to identify
a significant measure of subjectivity in the
corpus. 

Whatever it is that the
FIRST_PERSON_PRONOUN/DEFINITE_ARTICLE ratio
measures, it is certainly not 'subjectivity' in
any of its usual senses.

I assume you mean what the OED glosses as '[t]he
quality or condition of resting upon subjective
facts or mental representation; the character of
existing in the mind only'. However, it is unclear
why this should correlate with the frequency of
explicit self-mention. First-person pronouns
(FPPs) can feature prominently in starkly
objective accounts of past or present material
processes involving the self:

'Only time I have brown rice is before training
and I was having white rice after training, but
now I am cutting out most carbs'
(http://anabolicminds.com/forum/mma/172158-cutting
-weight-carbs.html)

At the same time, they can be entirely absent from
intensely subjective appraisals:

'As the work developed (and it seemed as if it
never would) the music grew almost imperceptibly
into a spiteful, clattering machine, only to end
back in the rapturous gossamer of impossibly high
and blissful shards of sound. There was an encore
of some solo Bach - always welcome, but there's
often the feeling that offering an old favourite
after some difficult contemporary music is
something of an apology to the intolerant few who
can't help coughing their guts up out of ignorance
and boredom.'
(http://www.musicomh.com/classical/proms/2011-69_0
911.htm)


There is no systematic catalogue of the uses and
functions of the first person plural pronoun that
I know of, but there's been quite extensive
discussion of the topic at Language Log (see
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3155 for a
list of relevant posts), and the data suggest
nothing like the simple correlation you posit.

Cheers,

A.

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