The modern usage of
the first person pronoun in English are interesting, and with a cursory glance it can propose an interesting development of the future of the English language.
We can see the
modern English language pronouns are descended from the Anglo-Saxon and thus from the Anglo-Frisian family (with the exception of the Old Norse loan of the third person plural
they). The modern English table of pronouns is quite simple when compared to
the table of Old English pronouns, which had separate forms for duality as well as case, something which means grammar to the modern English speaker, and instils fear in the common Anglophone.
The Middle English table is a bit closer to what we're used to, but can still seem unfamiliar.
However, particularly in the usage the singular first person pronoun, I seem to have noticed a lot of tendencies for
I to be dropped, with no nominative or subject of the sentence indicated. I cite a recent example I have encountered:
Have to go now.There is no clear suggestion of who is speaking, but by natural implication the speaker is the agent of the sentence. I have mainly observed it in text messages, internet messaging and, of course, spoken English. This has not been recently observed in formal writing, although one may create a hypothetical example such as:
I have visited your website, and am writing about your article.The second part of my hypothetical sentence above in bold lacks a clear subject marker, although it is implied by the verb
am being in the present singular first person form of the verb that it is the previous clause's
I as the agent.
This is interesting, as much more work needs to be done to see if English is taking on these tendencies, but it seems to suggest that English may be developing in a direction that would take on the pro-drop behaviour of languages such as Japanese, where the a pronoun is rarely used in indicating the agent of a sentence. The pronoun is often absent, merely implied, in Japanese.
In comparison, Italian is a language that is often referred as a pro-drop language, as pronouns are often only used for emphasis, but the difference between Italian and Japanese is that the agnet can still be clearly implied through the verb endings.
Parlo (I am speaking) implies the first person singular is the agent through the
O ending. Japanese does not alter its endings according to the agent. English only does in a limited way; compare the present form of the regular English verb
walk:
I/you/we/they walk, with
he/she/it/one walks.
This is just a supposition, of course, and would require much more gathering of evidence and analysis to see if it could be a hypothesis that would hold water. It would also require looking at the usage of English in a wide variety of locations to see if it is geographically peculiar to particular locales, or whether it is found amongst different types of speakers, whether it is unique to monolingual Anglophones, or to those who have English as their first language, etc. In other words, a lot of work to be done before the kernel of an idea is developed to a level that I can even attempt to answer the following questions:
Is
I at risk of dying out?
Is English likely to become a pro-drop language?
It's something to consider.
Haven't got time at the moment.
Gotta go now.
Catch you later.
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