LINGUIST List 9.229: Pronoun "I"

Sun Feb 15 1998

Sum: Pronoun "I"

Editor for this issue: Martin Jacobsen <marty@linguistlist.org>

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1. Tatje, Sum: Pronoun "I"

On January 21, I posted a query concerning the capitalization of the
English pronoun "I". Our guess here was that it is just conventional
and had to do with the desire to distinguish it from similar-looking
i's, u's, v's etc. in (medieval) handwriting.
In contrast to my very late summary (my apologies for the delay), the
first answers popped in almost immediately. I would like to thank
the following people for their help:
Anne Marie Augustus <treque13@imap2.asu.edu>
Keith Battarbee <keibat@mailhost.utu.fi>
Antony Dubach Green <green@zas.gwz-berlin.de>
Hartmut Haberland <hartmut@ruc.dk>
Kathryn Hansen <khansen@grove.ufl.edu>
Earl Herrick <kfemh00@tamuk.edu>
N. Hottel <N.Hottel@mail.alakhawayn.ma>
Mark Mandel <Mark@dragonsys.com>
Ingrid Piller <fs7a001@rrz.uni-hamburg.de>
Geoffrey Sampson <geoffs@cogs.susx.ac.uk>
Steven Schaufele <fcosw5@mbml.scu.edu.tw>
I have tried to find some kind of tentative categorization for the
answers, as follows:
1.  The "technical" arguments:
1.1. Several people agreed that the similarity of, i, j, u, v, m and n
in medieval handwriting is the source of the problem. Mark Mandel
illustrats this with the word "minimum", which would have been
composed of similar strokes more or less like that: ///////////////
which is /// / // / /// // ///
                             m   i n  i m   u  m
(Still a problem in modern handwriting, I think. Just try to write
words like "communism" or "communication" without a pause and without
counting your strokes afterwards!) Mark points out that the dot on the
i and j is a fairly late addition in order to distinguish these
letters in words like those above.  Similar problems arose in words
with combinations of u and v, as long as they were both represented by
v (lvve and dvve\255ve and dove in Middle English).  1.2. Keith
Battarbee points to the development of the tail in j as distinction
from the tailless i.  1.3. Geoffrey Sampson mentions the number one,
which was also written as a simple stroke and could thus be confused
with i.  1.4. Several people argue that i is such a small letter and
can therefore easily be overlooked (one hypothesis is that the dot on
the i is there not only for distinction, but also to make it look
bigger); consequently, it was left capitalized when lower-case initial
letters became normal - which leads Geoffrey Sampson to ask "why "I"
failed to change to "i", not why it was "I" in the first place."
1.5. "I" is the only one-letter pronoun, the article "a" being the
only other one-letter word in English; Keith Batterbee says that there
seems to be a general "dislike" of one-letter words in English
orthography.  1.6. Several people argued that the capitalization
developed with typesetting since the Middle Ages, for basically the
same reasons as those given above for handwriting (Ingrid Piller
indicates K. Faiss (1989): "Englische Sprachgeschichte", p. 152, as a
source - one that I have NOT consulted).
2. A purely linguistic(?) argument: 2.1. Anne Marie Augustus points
out that "I" generally appears as the subject of a sentence;
consequently it frequently appears as the first word and is therefore
capitalized (As a proof, she counted the I's in my query and found
seven I's in it, but only one was not sentence-initial. Well, this may
not be statistically significative, but thanks for counting
anyway. ;-) ).
3. The "psychological" arguments:
3.1. N. Hottel "would go for an explanation that takes into account
our egocentric nature, but more ..."
3.2. "... that considers I as a name, and names are capitalized." This
leads to...
3.3. Ingrid Piller thinks that "particularly intriguing is the way
this conventional spelling got re-motivated (by German scholars;
Volkerkunde, Volkerpsychologie and all that stuff) at the beginning of
this century when they tried to find out "universal character traits"
of a people from its language. The spelling served them as "evidence"
that "the English" are self-centered, whereas "the Germans",
capitalizing the 2nd p. pronouns, were supposed to be truly
altruistic." Well, unfortunately, "the Germans" had the chance to
falsify this theory in the thirties and forties, and used it.
4. A contrastive argument (inter- and intralingually):
4.1. Hartmut Haberland points to similar problems in Danish, where the few
capitalized words can also have a distinctive function:
- "I" (always capitalized), "you" (2nd plural) in contrast to "i",
- "in" "De", "you" (address pronoun, expresses rather distance than
- respect) in contrast to "de", "they"
I found the answers very interesting though at least the question
whether the source for the capitalization of "I" is in medieval
handwriting or early typesetting doesn't seem to be quite evident. I
suppose both processes are related with each other. Obviously, some
more research is still necessary, which has not yet been done because,
as Earl Herrick points out, "it would require looking at a lot of
written and printed English." Any volunteers?
- ---------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Rolf Tatje
Gerhard-Mercator-Universitat
FB 3 - Romanistik
D-47048 Duisburg
Phone:	 (+203) 379-2605
Fax:	 (+203) 379-1952
E-mail: he252ta@uni-duisburg.de