case in personal pronouns

[Dan Everett]

Well, as someone who has been a fan of Tom Jobim (author of the song)
since the 60s, I should point out that first the English lyrics have
little to do with the Portuguese lyrics. Second, Portuguese colloquial
dialects don't distinguish accusative vs. nominative third person
(because they have lost their clitics). This means that if a Brazilian,
e.g. Jobim, tries to write English lyrics the nominative/accusative he
vs. him contrast might be lost if they think in Portuguese. Moreover,
songs, especially popular songs, very often violate the speaker's own
grammar to get a 'cheap rhyme'. As Paul Simon spoke in Kathy's Song, 'of
poets who  spend their  time 'writing words that tear and strain to
rhyme'.

-- Dan




.........................
Dan Everett
Professor of Phonetics and Phonology
Department of Linguistics
Arts Building
University of Manchester
Oxford Road
M13 9PL
Manchester, UK
dan.everett at man.ac.uk
Phone: 44-161-275-3158
Dept. Fax and Phone: 44-161-275-3187
http://lings.ln.man.ac.uk/info/staff/de

-----Original Message-----
From: Discussion List for ALT [mailto:LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG]
On Behalf Of Jeroen Wiedenhof
Sent: Wednesday, March 26, 2003 6:35 AM
To: LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
Subject: Re: case in personal pronouns


At Tuesday, March 25, 2003 2:14 PM, Dan I. Slobin wrote:


But I don't recall ever having heard the "subject" form directly after a
pronoun (e.g., *she gave it to I, *they promised to go out with I)


One odd but famous example that comes to
mind is from the lyrics of The Girl from
Ipanema:

>but each day when she walks to the sea
>she looks straight ahead not at he

Full lyrics in Portugese and English are
at
http://www.niehs.nih.gov/kidspan/lyrics/ipanema.htm

----------------------------------------
Jeroen Wiedenhof         +31-71-527.2525
Sinological Institute  Leiden University
P.O. Box 9515 / 2300 RA Leiden / Holland
jeroen at wiedenhof.nl     www.wiedenhof.nl <http://www.wiedenhof.nl/>
----------------------------------------


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20030326/a97ae9cd/attachment.htm>