# die wir



## tosamja

Wofür brauchen wir das Wort "wir" in diesem Satz? Wäre es möglich ohne es? Was ist eigentlich seine Funktion? 

*Die meisten von uns, die wir heute Männer sind, sind nicht bewusst über diese Schwelle geführt worden. *


----------



## JClaudeK

_"die wir"_ macht deutlich, dass der Sprecher sich dazuzählt / jetzt selbst auch ein Mann ist.


----------



## berndf

Ja, es dient nur der Verstärkung der Aussage. Semantisch notwendig ist es nicht.

Crossed with JClaude


----------



## tosamja

Danke! Die Weise auf die das Wort "wir" hinzugefügt ist, ist trotzdem für mich sehr überraschend. Ist das wirklich 100% grammatisch korrekt? 

Ich kenne keine andere Sprache, wo man so etwas in dieser Situation machen könnte. Z.B. auf Englisch wäre "Most of us, that _*we*_ are today men,..." total falsch. Oder "La plupart de nous, qui _*nous*_ sommes aujourd'hui des hommes, ..." auf Französisch.


----------



## berndf

tosamja said:


> Ich kenne keine andere Sprache, wo man so etwas in dieser Situation machen könnte. Z.B. auf Englisch wäre "Most of us, that _*we*_ are today men,..." total falsch.


_Hereby know *we that we dwell in him*, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit._
1 John 4:13


----------



## tosamja

Sorry, this discussion should not be about English, but your example is not at all of the same kind. In fact, in your example the second "we" could not even be dropped. You can notice the difference by translating the sentence into German: "that" is translated by "dass" and not by "die". That's the crucial difference.


----------



## berndf

The construction is exactly the same. There is no difference in structure. You _can_ drop the second _we_.


----------



## tosamja

I maintain you *cannot*, and the construction is not the same at all. In German it says: "Daran erkennen wir, dass wir in ihm bleiben und er in uns(...)"

Would you really drop the second "wir"? I don't think so.


----------



## tosamja

Of course we can say

"We know that we are today men."

That's analogous to your quotation and there has never been any doubt about it. (Sure enough, the second "we" cannot be dropped in such a construction.)

But we cannot say

"Most of us, that *we* are men today, have not been consciously led over that threshold."

related to my initial example. Instead, only

"Most of us, that are men today, have not been consciously led over that threshold."

or versions thereof would be possible in English.

As for German however it seems like that the first option would also be ok. That was the point of my surprise, nothing else.


----------



## berndf

tosamja said:


> I maintain you *cannot*, and the construction is not the same at all. In German it says: "Daran erkennen wir, dass wir in ihm bleiben und er in uns(...)"


You confused the conjunction _dass _with the relative pronoun _das_. This is a completely different construction.


----------



## tosamja

berndf said:


> You confused the conjunction _dass _with the relative pronoun _das_. This is a completely different construction.



I did not. That's one of the official German translations of the New Testament.


----------



## berndf

tosamja said:


> I did not. That's one of the official German translations of the New Testament.


My mistake. Wrong example.  *I *confused the English conjunction _that _with the English relative pronoun _that_.


----------



## bearded

In German, the verb after the relative pronoun can only be in the 3rd person. Z.B.'' ich bin es, der das macht'' /in other languages ''...der das mache''.
If in German you want to use the 1st or 2nd person of the verb, you must add the personal pronoun > ich bin es, der _ich_ das mache.
In the plural, 1st and 3rd person of verbs have the same shape. In a phrase like   '',die wir hier sind'',  'sind' is a first person. If you omit 'wir', then 'sind' technically becomes a 3rd person, like in  ''jene,die hier sind''. Of course semantically nothing changes,as berndf explained.


----------



## JClaudeK

Ursprünglich wollte ich dazufügen:
_Die meisten von uns, die heute Männer sind _(ohne "wir") ..... könnte auch von einer Frau ausgesprochen werden. 
Aber dann hatte ich Bedenken. Sind diese berechtigt?


----------



## berndf

JClaudeK said:


> Ursprünglich wollte ich dazufügen:
> _Die meisten von uns, die heute Männer sind _(ohne "wir") ..... könnte auch von einer Frau ausgesprochen werden.
> Aber dann hatte ich Bedenken. Sind diese berechtigt?


Doch ja, guter Punkt. Ohne wir kann das auch von einer Frau gesagt werden. Z.B.: Ein ehemaliges Mädchen einer Schulklasse will eine Aussage über die Jungen der Klasse treffen, die ja heute Männer sind. Die Version ohne _wir _wäre dann möglich, die Version mit _wir_ nicht.


----------



## Dan2

tosamja said:


> Ich kenne keine andere Sprache, wo man so etwas in dieser Situation machen könnte.


"so etwas" im Englischen (auch wenn nicht genau dasselbe):
"Most of us, who are today grown men, ..."
vs
"Most of us, we who are today grown men, ..."
Und, wie von JClaude in Bezug auf die deutschen Sätze erwähnt, kann nur der erste von einer Frau gesagt werden.


----------



## JClaudeK

Diese Wortstellung wäre auch auf Deutsch möglich:
_Die meisten von uns, * wir, die* heute Männer sind, ...._


----------



## bearded

Dan2 said:


> "so etwas" im Englischen (auch wenn nicht genau dasselbe):
> "Most of us, who are today grown men, ..."
> vs
> "Most of us, we who are today grown men, ..."
> Und, wie von JClaude in Bezug auf die deutschen Sätze erwähnt, kann nur der erste von einer Frau gesagt werden.


Und auf Englisch empfindest du das 'are' im ersten Satz als 3.Person, und das 'are' im zweiten Satz als 1. Person?  In anderen Worten, bezieht sich das 'are' im ersten Satz auf 'most' oder auf 'us'? Ich frage, um ggfs. Englisch und Deutsch unter diesem Aspekt zu vergleichen (s. meine #13 oben).


----------



## Demiurg

Ein klassisches Beispiel für diese Form: _Vater unser, der du bist im Himmel ..._
in Analogie zu_: Pater noster, qui es in caelis ..._

Wie bearded man oben richtig erklärt hat, ist die 2. Person (_bist_) nur mit dem expliziten Personalpronomen (_du_) möglich. Sonst müsste es heißen:
_
Unser Vater, der im Himmel ist ..._


----------



## berndf

Demiurg said:


> Ein klassisches Beispiel für diese Form: _Vater unser, der du bist im Himmel ..._
> in Analogie zu_: Pater noster, qui es in caelis ..._


Yes, that was the analogy. I knew that construct existed in an other language in the Bible.


----------



## Dan2

@earded man:
"Most of us, who are today grown men, ..."
ist mehrdeutig, bemerke ich jetzt:
"Most of us, who (most) are (3rd person) men..." (kann von einer Frau gesagt werden)
"Most of us, who (we) are (1st person) men..." (kann nicht von einer Frau gesagt werden)
In Spanish I would distinguish between, "La mayoría de nosotros, que somos/que son..." How about Italian?

Note also,
I, who am also a student of German, ... (grammatical but somewhat awkward)
I, who is also a student of German, ... (totally impossible)
to me, who am also a student of German, ...  (very awkward, may occur in older literature, I would never say it)
to me, who is also a student of German, ... (totally impossible)


----------



## exgerman

tosamja said:


> Danke! Die Weise auf die das Wort "wir" hinzugefügt ist, ist trotzdem für mich sehr überraschend. Ist das wirklich 100% grammatisch korrekt?
> 
> Ich kenne keine andere Sprache, wo man so etwas in dieser Situation machen könnte. Z.B. auf Englisch wäre "Most of us, that _*we*_ are today men,..." total falsch. Oder "La plupart de nous, qui _*nous*_ sommes aujourd'hui des hommes, ..." auf Französisch.


In fact, it's perfectly natural to say in English _Most of us, we who are men today..... _when emphasizing that the speaker includes himself in the category "Men".

But the German case is different: German does regularly include a personal pronoun when the relative refers to a first or second person antecedent.


----------



## bearded

Dan2 said:


> How about Italian?


Italian behaves like Spanish (I hope this is allowed by moderators, though slightly off-topic - but it is _immerhin _a comparison between languages):
_La maggioranza di noi, che *sono* uomini _(can be said by a woman: somewhat awkward style, though*)
_La maggioranza di noi che *siamo *uomini _(cannot be said by a woman).

*) because 'maggioranza' is feminine singular, whereas the verb is plural and the predicate masculine...
The correct expression would be _La maggioranza di noi che è formata da uomini._
This difficulty does of course not exist with English _most, _or German _die meisten-_


----------



## JClaudeK

Auch auf  Französisch kann man unterscheiden:
La plupart d'entre nous *qui sont *devenus des hommes aujourd'hui (kann von einer Frau gesagt werden)
La plupart d'entre nous, (*nous*,*)  *qui sommes* devenus des hommes aujourd'hui (kann nicht von einer Frau gesagt werden)


tosamja said:


> Ich kenne keine andere Sprache, wo man so etwas in dieser Situation machen könnte.*


* auch das geht auf Französisch (ein "wir" dazufügen), aber auch ohne dieses vorausgestellte, betonte "nous" versteht man durch die verschiedenen Konjugationen, ob  der Sprechende ein Mann oder eine Frau ist, bzw. ob sich der Mann dazuzählt.


----------



## tosamja

Thanks for the examples of introducing the "we" in various other languages. However, none of them does it exactly in the way it's done in German, the key part being "die wir". What I found surprising was really as I said _*the way*_ in which the "we" is introduced, not the mere fact that it was introduced. The examples in English, French etc. are nothing surprising and work well not only in my mother tongue (Vecina nas, *mi, koji* smo danas postali muskarci), but probably in many other languages. The German construction is however grammatically different from those.


----------



## berndf

tosamja said:


> The German construction is however grammatically different from those.


How? I see no difference to the Latin and Italian examples, except that Italian and Latin are pro-drop and German isn't. Can you explain?


----------



## tosamja

berndf said:


> How? I see no difference to the Latin and Italian examples, except that Italian and Latin are pro-drop and German isn't. Can you explain?



The difference is that in the Latin and Italian examples the personal pronoun "we" is not repeated, whereas in German it is repeated and indeed right after the relative pronoun. 

(Those examples are also not unique to Italian and Latin, one says the same in English "Our Father which art in heaven", or in French "Notre Père qui es aux cieux".)


----------



## bearded

tosamja said:


> What I found surprising was really as I said _*the way*_ in which the "we" is introduced


If you consider what I wrote in #13, I think you'll find an explanation.  In the relative clause, you first find  'die' (that without further pronoun would require the verb in 3rd person), so to have the verb in 1st person you have to add 'wir' before the verb.  No matter if in the plural 1st and 3rd person of the verb sound identical: the habit of repeating the pronoun remains, like in the 2nd person.
wir,die heute Männer sind (3rd person) = wir ,jene, die heute Männer sind
ihr, die ihr heute Männer seid (2nd person)
wir, die wir heute Männer sind (1st person).


----------



## berndf

tosamja said:


> The difference is that in the Latin and Italian examples the personal pronoun "we" is not repeated, whereas in German it is repeated and indeed right after the relative pronoun.
> 
> (Those examples are also not unique to Italian and Latin, one says the same in English "Our Father which art in heaven", or in French "Notre Père qui es aux cieux".)


Hmm... _wir sind _is the regular translation of _siamo_ (rather than _noi siamo_) because Italian is pro-drop and German isn't. Although the construct exists as a rhetorical device also elsewhere, it is typical "Bible language" and like _Our Father *which art *in heaven_ (which is ungrammatical because the relative pronoun, as bearded man explained, requires a third and not a second person verb form) seems to be nothing else than an attempt at a literal translation of the Latin construct.

@bearded man: Out of interest, could you also say _La maggioranza di noi che noi siamo uomini _or would that be ungrammatical?


----------



## bearded

berndf said:


> could you also say _La maggioranza di noi che noi siamo uomini _or would that be ungrammatical?


It would sound ungrammatical (utterly unidiomatic/redundant) because _siamo_ already means 'we are', exactly as you said above.  Likewise, I think that in French you could not say _nous qui nous sommes. _The fact is that in  Romance languages - contrary to German - the relative pronoun can govern any verb person, not only the 3rd one.  It is - initially - a difficulty for most foreign students/learners of German, like for tosamja.

Please be advised that I shall be on vacation from today up to 13/14th Nov., and I will not be able to post during that period.


----------



## tosamja

berndf said:


> ... like _Our Father *which art *in heaven_ (which is ungrammatical because the relative pronoun, as bearded man explained, requires a third and not a second person verb form) ...



Archaic it is, but I would not bet it's ungrammatical to use the second person (although that may explain all those billions of unanswered prayers).


----------



## berndf

Thank you.


bearded man said:


> The fact is that in Romance languages - contrary to German - the relative pronoun can govern any verb person, not only the 3rd one.


Yes, that makes sense. But I think you mean German*ic*, not German. I can't think of any Germanic language that licenses this. _Our Father *which art *in heaven_ is certainly not consistent with ordinary English grammar but is special "Bible English".


tosamja said:


> although that may explain all those billions of unanswered prayers


----------



## tosamja

berndf said:


> ...But I think you mean German*ic*, not German. I can't think of any Germanic language that licenses this.



The following example was already given by Dan2:

I, who am also a student of German, ... (grammatical but somewhat awkward)

So the relative pronoun can govern a 1st verb person as well. And English is a Germanic language


----------



## berndf

tosamja said:


> The following example was already given by Dan2:
> 
> I, who am also a student of German, ... (grammatical but somewhat awkward)
> 
> So the relative pronoun can govern a 1st verb person as well. And English is a Germanic language


I doubt the few handful of attestations for such constructs in literature are really suitable to postulate a regular grammatical structure. Dan considers all variants either awkward or impossible. It seems that in Germanic grammar, referring to a first or second person pronoun by a relative clause is simply not foreseen. In natural usage one would try to find a different way to express that. In English it is natural only in plural where no conflict can possibly occur.


----------



## DerFrosch

berndf said:


> It seems that in Germanic grammar, referring to a first or second person pronoun by a relative clause is simply not foreseen.



I have to disagree with you. In Swedish this is perfectly idiomatic.

_*Du som* bor i Tyskland borde ha vetat det. (_Literally:_ You (_singular_), who live in Germany, should have known that.)_

That's how you would say it, any rephrasing would be far less natural. It's not _always _the most natural choice - often not if the relative clause is a long one - but always grammatically correct.

If I'm not mistaken, the same goes for Norwegian and Danish - we share the relative pronoun _som_, which can be used for all grammatical persons.


----------



## berndf

DerFrosch said:


> I have to disagree with you. In Swedish this is perfectly idiomatic.


My statement ends:


berndf said:


> In English it is natural only in plural where no conflict can possibly occur.


This also applies to your sample sentence. I would be convinced, if you could show me a structurally similar relative clause in older language when _jag bor, du bor,_ _han bor, vi bor, ni bor _and_ de bor_ where still morphologically distinguishable.


----------



## DerFrosch

I'm not following you. There's no plural in my sentence (_du _is exclusively singular, just like in German).


----------



## berndf

DerFrosch said:


> I'm not following you. There's no plural in my sentence (_du _is exclusively singular, just like in German).


In English
_We who are men_ is perfectly idiomatic.
_I who am a man_ is possible but somehow weird.
_I who is a man_ is impossible.

What is the difference?
In plural it is _we are, you are, they are_, i.e first, second and third person verbs are indistinguishable and no conflict arises between the relative pronoun that normally takes a third person verb and first person semantics.
In singular you have the choice between _is_ and _am_. One is wrong the other awkward. --> Better stay clear of the whole construct.

In Swedish there is no person inflection of the verb, neither in singular nor in plural and hence the whole issue doesn't arise, neither in singular nor in plural.

But maybe I am wrong about how I drew the distinction.
@Dan2: What does your Sprachgefühl tell you about _we who are men _vs._ I who am a man._


----------



## Dan2

Dan2 said:


> I, who am also a student of German, ... (grammatical but somewhat awkward)
> I, who is also a student of German, ... (totally impossible)


The "take-away" here, as tosamja understood, is that even if this is not a favored construction in modern language, it is fully clear to us native speakers that if it IS used, we do NOT use the 3rd person verb with relative pronouns with non-3rd-person referents.


berndf said:


> _Our Father *which art *in heaven_ (which is ungrammatical because the relative pronoun, as bearded man explained, requires a third and not a second person verb form)


(I think BM _asked_, not _claimed_, to which I responded with my "I, who am" example.)
We no longer use "which" to refer to people or "thou" verb forms, so (with a little additional modernizing) let's consider instead,
"Our father, who are in heaven, may your name be sanctified..."
I don't consider this ungrammatical, because I hear "Our father" as a "vocative", not a 3rd-person nominative.  I would not use "is" here.  Contrast this with what I might say, with a brother or sister at my side, to another person:
"Our father, who is in Heathrow, ..."

EDIT: Crossed with berndf - maybe I'm rehashing settled points.
> What does your Sprachgefühl tell you about _we who are men _vs._ I who am a man._
I'm OK with both.  I would write:
"I, who am a man, ..."
and either
"We, who are men, ..." (all of us are men)
or
"We who are men ... " (I'm speaking only for the men in the group)


----------



## berndf

Dan2 said:


> I'm OK with both.


So, you think my point (_we, your, they are _but_ I am _and_ he is_) is irrelevant?


----------



## Dan2

W/r/t DerFrosch's comment: There are two separate issues:

1. What verb form do you use?  Swedish tells us nothing because (even for "to be") every person takes the same ending.  (This was berndf's point.)

2. Do you say things like "You who are" AT ALL?  DF says that it's perfectly idiomatic in Swedish.  That DOES contribute to the thread.


----------



## Dan2

Dan2 said:


> I'm OK with both.  I would write:
> 1. "I, who am a man, ..."
> and either
> 2. "We, who are men, ..." (all of us are men)
> or
> 3. "We who are men ... " (I'm speaking only for the men in the group)





berndf said:


> So, you think my point (_we, your, they are _but_ I am _and_ he is_) is irrelevant?


Context matters of course.  I would say that structure 3. can be quite natural  ("We who read WRF know that...").  1. and 2. seem to me to be fully natural only in certain language styles, for instance in speeches ("I, who am a strong supporter health-care reform,..."; "We, who have marched for years for civil rights,...") but would be less likely to be heard in everyday conversation.  So the restrictive/non-restrictive distinction is more crucial for me.


----------



## berndf

Dan2 said:


> 1. and 2. seem to me to be fully natural only in certain language styles, for instance in speeches ("I, who am a strong supporter health-care reform,..."; "We, who have marched for years for civil rights,...") but would be less likely to be heard in everyday conversation.


It is about the same in German with "Ich, der ich..." or "wir, die wir...". It sounds solemn or at least important.


Dan2 said:


> I would say that structure 3. can be quite natural ("We who read WRF know that...")


Yes, that is the difference I meant.


----------



## DerFrosch

Dan2 said:


> There are two separate issues:
> 
> 1. What verb form do you use? Swedish tells us nothing because (even for "to be") every person takes the same ending. (This was berndf's point.)


Right, but that's not the issue that I was addressing in my comment.

So, berndf, frankly I'm not really sure what you're trying to say in #38. I simply felt that this claim was untrue:


berndf said:


> It seems that in Germanic grammar, referring to a first or second person pronoun by a relative clause is simply not foreseen.


It was in fact unnecessary to use Swedish to refute that statement. You said it yourself:


berndf said:


> In English
> _We who are men_ is perfectly idiomatic.


----------



## berndf

DerFrosch said:


> So, berndf, frankly I'm not really sure what you're trying to say in #38.


Exactly that:


Dan2 said:


> 1. What verb form do you use? Swedish tells us nothing because (even for "to be") every person takes the same ending. (This was berndf's point.)


The whole thread is about first and second person marking in the relative clause:
_I, who *am* a man, ...
Die meisten von uns, die *wir *heute Männer *sind*, ...
La maggioranza di noi che *siamo *uomini
Vater unser, der *du bist* im Himmel ...
Pater noster, qui *es* in caelis_

In Plural, English does not mark the verb form for person and Swedish doesn't mark verbs for person at all and hence
_We who are men...
Du som bor i Tyskland borde ha vetat det._
don't contain any person marking in the relative clause at all and therefore belong to a different class of sentences than those we are discussing here. That is my point.


----------



## elroy

Regarding English, I'm inclined to side with berndf's views.  I don't think I would ever use "I who am" in any context in modern English.  I am _only_ familiar with such forms from the Bible.  So archaic/Biblical usage notwithstanding, I don't personally think English usage weakens berndf's conjecture that such constructions (relative pronoun [and no personal pronoun] + first person or second person verbs ) don't occur in Germanic languages, and I completely agree that Swedish unfortunately doesn't provide any evidence one way or the other because Swedish verbs don't inflect for person or number.


----------



## tosamja

elroy said:


> Regarding English, I'm inclined to side with berndf's views.  I don't think I would ever use "I who am" in any context in modern English.  I am _only_ familiar with such forms from the Bible.  So archaic/Biblical usage notwithstanding, I don't personally think English usage weakens berndf's conjecture that such constructions (relative pronoun [and no personal pronoun] + first person or second person verbs ) don't occur in Germanic languages, and I completely agree that Swedish unfortunately doesn't provide any evidence one way or the other because Swedish verbs don't inflect for person or number.



Well, there is a couple of threads devoted to the issue, with tens of examples confirmed by native speakers, where the relative pronoun is followed by 1st/2nd person singular verbs. 

http://forum.wordreference.com/threads/its-you-who-is-are.1798583/

http://forum.wordreference.com/threads/it-is-i-me-who-determine-s-how-they-treat-me.494242/

http://forum.wordreference.com/threads/it-was-i-me-who.1725278/

http://forum.wordreference.com/threads/its-not-i-who-has-have.170393/

Based on that, I would say it can be established with a high degree of confidence that the relative pronoun "who" can govern all three singular persons in English (very similar to Romance languages, and unlike German), far outside of the biblical context.

Or do you find that anything non-colloquial automatically is biblical?  Here are very nice examples by se16teddy from http://forum.wordreference.com/threads/it-is-they-who-has-have.1776549/



> "Yes, in this sentence (Is it you who have the queen of spades?) 'who' is in the second person (you) rather than in the third person (he she or it) as it your other example. Colloquial English generally avoids using _who _in the first person (I/we) or in the second person (you). In colloquial English, we usually paraphrase so that _who _is in the third person: _You're the one who has the queen of spades._
> 
> In formal written English, _who_ can be in any person.
> _It is I who am in the wrong. _
> _It is thou who art in the wrong. _
> _It is he/she who is in the wrong. _
> _It is we who are in the wrong. "_


----------



## berndf

tosamja said:


> Or do you find that anything non-colloquial automatically is biblical?  Here are very nice examples by se16teddy from


Yes, those examples are rather literary, not merely non-colloquial_. _They sound at least as stilted as the German sentences in #1 (or "formal" as se16teddy called it), if not more.


----------



## elroy

My opinion on se16teddy's examples:

_It is I who am in the wrong. _- I'm wary of making generalizations, but I'm 99%+ sure I would never use this in writing or in speech - no matter how formal the context - and I don't think I'm ever come across it in any non-archaic context - whether formal or informal.  It sounds entirely incorrect.

_It is thou who art in the wrong. - _This is no longer part of modern English.  It could be used in an attempt to mimic archaic/Biblical English, in which case I wouldn't find it strange.  I might use it that way myself.  However, this example doesn't say anything about modern English usage.

_It is he/she who is in the wrong. 
It is we who are in the wrong._
The above two examples are fine and would be used in formal settings (since they use pronouns in the nominative case) - but they don't say anything about the matter we're discussing since the relative clauses use third-person verb forms.

Tosamja, I see nothing in my post that suggests that I find "anything non-colloquial" Biblical.  Your dismissive rhetorical question is unwarranted (and hardly attenuated by the winking smiley).


----------



## tosamja

berndf said:


> Yes, those examples are rather literary, not merely non-colloquial_. _They sound at least as stilted as the German sentences in #1 (or "formal" as se16teddy called it), if not more.



No doubt such forms are formal, probably even very formal. I just thought formal or literary is not the same as biblical or archaic. In fact, some of us use formal language on a daily basis, without ever touching the Bible. 

As for the German sentence, the book it comes from is a rather ordinary one, published in München in 2012. The topic is broadly speaking psychology, so the general writing style is not so much literary and even less biblical. (Depending on one's living style, one may easily spend more time within such a linguistic register, than using the informal/colloquial register) 

I wonder if "*Die meisten von uns, die wir heute Männer sind*" is as unpopular in Germany, as "_*It is I who am wrong*_" is among English speakers.


----------



## Dan2

elroy said:


> I don't think I would ever use "I who am" in any context in modern English.


You really can't imagine a presidential candidate addressing an audience and saying the following (bold type to capture the intonation pattern I have in mind):
*"I*, who have worked *tirelessly *for *years *for working-class *Americans*, promise that as *President *I will ..."
I _really _don't see that as biblical syntax.
(You're not drawing a distinction between "to be" and other verbs, are you?  If so we can have our candidate say,
"*I*, who am the son of *penniless immigrants*, understand the *need *for ..."
)

But exactly how natural sentences like those above are is really beside the point.  The main input that I tried to contribute is that biblical- or 21st-century-oratory-sounding, in such sentences verb agreement is essential; no one would say "I, who is ...".  And you clearly agree to the importance of that point, since you say,


elroy said:


> I completely agree that Swedish unfortunately doesn't provide any evidence one way or the other because Swedish verbs don't inflect for person or number.


----------



## berndf

tosamja said:


> As for the German sentence, the book it comes from is a rather ordinary one, published in München in 2012. The topic is broadly speaking psychology, so the general writing style is not so much literary and even less biblical.


Neither elroy nor me said the context had to be Biblical. We said that the construction was _derived _from Biblical language and and therefore generally have a solemn, stilted and unnatural sound.



tosamja said:


> I wonder if "*Die meisten von uns, die wir heute Männer sind*" is as unpopular in Germany, as "_*It is I who am wrong*_" is among English speakers.


Perhaps a bit less but generally they play in a similar league.


----------



## tosamja

elroy said:


> Tosamja, I see nothing in my post that suggests that I find "anything non-colloquial" Biblical.  Your dismissive rhetorical question is unwarranted (and hardly attenuated by the winking smiley).



My apologies. It should have been more to the point. The question should have been why expressions like that would be considered specifically as biblical and not more broadly as formal, or rather very formal. In the threads I referred to, people treat them as formal, or "extremely formal" (see below an example by Loob from http://forum.wordreference.com/threads/it-was-i-me-who.1725278/), but not necessarily archaic or more specifically biblical.



> I think it's a straight choice between the extremely formal
> _Thank God that it is not she but I who am supposed to get this pain_
> and the informal
> _Thank God it's not her but me who's supposed to get this pain_



I find it slightly strange that one version is "extremely" formal, and the other one INformal. Something should also be standard (neutral)


----------



## berndf

tosamja said:


> I find it slightly strange that one version is "extremely" formal, and the other one INformal. Something should also be standard (neutral)


That has been said several times: In "normal" situation people try to rephrase to avoid the situation altogether.


----------



## tosamja

elroy said:


> Regarding English, I'm inclined to side with berndf's views.  I don't think I would ever use "I who am" in any context in modern English.  I am _only_ familiar with such forms from the Bible.  So archaic/Biblical usage notwithstanding, I don't personally think English usage weakens berndf's conjecture that such constructions (relative pronoun [and no personal pronoun] + first person or second person verbs ) don't occur in Germanic languages(...)



There is an American song from 1963 in which the relative pronoun "who" is nicely implying a first person singular verb:

_*I, I who have nothing, I, I who have no one
Adore you and love you so
I'm just a no one with nothing to give you, but love
I love you*_


----------



## berndf

tosamja said:


> There is an American song from 1963 in which the relative pronoun "who" is nicely implying a first person singular verb:
> 
> _*I, I who have nothing, I, I who have no one
> Adore you and love you so
> I'm just a no one with nothing to give you, but love
> I love you*_


And? What is that supposed to show?


----------



## tosamja

berndf said:


> And? What is that supposed to show?



I am surprised you see no connection. It's yet another example, showing how the r.p. "who" governs a first person singular verb in a Germanic language in a relatively modern context that is not even very formal. It is directly addressed to elroy's comment, saying they would never use such a construction "IN ANY CONTEXT IN MODERN ENGLISH", and that they are "ONLY familiar with such forms from the Bible". Well, now we are also familiar with such forms from soul songs from the 60s...  

The statement 
_
"such constructions (relative pronoun [and no personal pronoun] + first person or second person verbs ) don't occur in Germanic languages"_ 

is simply too strong to be true. As you can clearly see, they do occur.


----------



## Hutschi

"Die meisten von uns, die wir heute Männer sind" is not unpopular, it only sounds a little bit pathetic and poetic.

I want to give an additional difference in meaning to  _"Die meisten von uns, die heute Männer sind"_ to show that you cannot drop "wir".

One difference was already named: If a woman says  "*Die meisten von uns, die wir heute Männer sind*" it sounds strange.

But there are more:

1. "*Die meisten von uns, die wir heute Männer sind*"  - "meisten" is a part of "uns", and "die wir heute Männer sind" is an identical (as set) to "uns".
2.  "*Die meisten von uns, die heute Männer sind*" - "uns" may or may not be another set than "die wir alle Männer sind".
2.a. "uns" may include children, men, and women.
2.b.  "uns" may include men only and it might be identical to 1.

To decide it context is required. 1. is blocked for me without context, and 2. a. sounds incomplete.
Instead of 2.a. I'd say 3.
3.  "*Die meisten von uns, die, die heute Männer sind*"


----------



## Gernot Back

tosamja said:


> Die meisten von uns, die wir heute Männer sind, sind nicht bewusst über diese Schwelle geführt worden.





berndf said:


> Ja, es dient nur der Verstärkung der Aussage. Semantisch notwendig ist es nicht.


Doch, wie bereits an der Unmöglichkeit gesehen, dass eine Frau diesen Satz sagen könnte, ist es selbst dann, wenn ein Mann ihn sagt, semantisch nicht egal, ob das _wir _weggelassen wird.

_Die meisten von uns, die heute Männer sind, sind nicht bewusst über diese Schwelle geführt worden._

_Die meisten von uns, die wir heute Männer sind, sind nicht bewusst über diese Schwelle geführt worden._
In Satz 1 sind nicht unbedingt alle aus "unserer Gruppe" heute (schon) erwachsene Menschen männlichen Geschlechts. Das erklärt auch, warum eine Frau oder ein Junge, ein Knabe diesen Satz sagen kann.
Restriktiver Relativsatz (defining relative clause)

In Satz 2 sind alle aus "unserer Gruppe" heute erwachsene Männer. Man könnte, anstatt einen Relativsatz zu gebrauchen, auch einfach mit einer Apposition von _uns (heutigen/jetzigen) Männern_ sprechen.
Explikativer Relativsatz (non-defining relative clause)


----------



## berndf

Gernot Back said:


> Doch, wie bereits an der Unmöglichkeit gesehen, dass eine Frau diesen Satz sagen könnte, ist es selbst dann, wenn ein Mann ihn sagt, semantisch nicht egal, ob das _wir _weggelassen wird.


Ja, das hatte JClaude schon angemerkt, und darüber haben wir auch Einigkeit hergestellt.


----------



## berndf

tosamja said:


> I am surprised you see no connection.


How could it possibly change the register association when you come with an attestation under poetic licence?


----------



## tosamja

berndf said:


> How could it possibly change the register association when you come with an attestation under poetic licence?



I have no idea what you mean. Let me repeat. The elroy's statement I was replying to says

_"So archaic/Biblical usage notwithstanding, I don't personally think English usage weakens berndf's conjecture that such constructions (relative pronoun [and no personal pronoun] + first person or second person verbs ) don't occur in Germanic languages"_

Neither my song example (I who have nothing...), nor Dan2's President example (I, who have worked tirelessly for years...), are archaic or Biblical.

Please try to interpret my comments as replying directly to the corresponding quoted text, otherwise why would one quote.


----------



## berndf

tosamja said:


> I have no idea what you mean.


Yes, I can see that.
Please reread #52.

Dan and Elroy seem to differ in the _precise_ register association but both would surely agree that their point of contention cannot be resolved by attestations under poetic licence. Dan's example is about a register that is supposed to sound solemn yet at the same time natural and not literary.


----------



## tosamja

berndf said:


> Yes, I can see that.
> Please reread #52.
> 
> Dan and Elroy seem to differ in the _precise_ register association but both would surely agree that their point of contention cannot be resolved by attestations under poetic licence. Dan's example is about a register that is supposed to sound solemn yet at the same time natural and not literary.



Interesting. Let me even be more specific. The song example belongs to the corpus of a Germanic language, and it's at the same time in this particular case neither archaic nor biblical. It actually sounds natural in the given context. Thus it contradicts directly the above statement of elroy, who claimed it's restricted to archaic or biblical register.

What is a language? It's what people say, write, and sometimes sing as well. There are all kinds of registers. The above elroy's statement was very restrictive and singled out archaic and biblical registers, implying the construction is impossible in all other registers. This is simply wrong.

Besides, the question is not anymore whether such a construction is _grammatically correct_. Dan2 confirmed it is multiple times. The next question was only about the usage, not correctness. My song example is thus contributing only to show in what other contexts it may be used.


----------



## tosamja

berndf said:


> Yes, I can see that.
> Please reread #52.
> 
> Dan and Elroy seem to differ in the _precise_ register association but both would surely agree that their point of contention cannot be resolved by attestations under poetic licence. Dan's example is about a register that is supposed to sound solemn yet at the same time natural and not literary.



In #52 you say

"We said that the construction was _derived_ from Biblical language and and therefore generally have a solemn, stilted and unnatural sound."

Notwithstanding the fact that I did not find where exactly both of you had said that before, I am realizing that you provided no tangible proof that the constructions such as "I who have" are _derived from biblical language_. Backing that statement would require a huge amount of serious scientific work. Do you have a reference to any kind of such work? 
_
_


----------



## berndf

tosamja said:


> I am realizing that you provided no tangible proof that the constructions such as "I who have" are _derived from biblical language_.


I said it was _typical "Bible language"_ and it _seems to be nothing else than an attempt at a literal translation of the Latin construct_ and elroy said he agreed with my _conjecture_.

It isn't etymological proof, it is shared intuition which we reported as witness statements of educated native speakers of our respective languages. I am afraid this is all we can provide you with at this time.


----------



## elroy

As berndf intimated, I was not intending to make any absolute statements.  I clearly stated I was wary of making generalizations.  I was sharing my intuitions based on my personal experience.  

Dan2, as far as your examples, I really can't say that I can recall hearing that construction (but I haven't really watched many presidential candidate speeches).  The more I say your sentences to myself, the less unnatural they start to sound - but that's as far as my tolerance will go.  Maybe I should listen for this construction and see if I come across it?  It could be the case that I've been processing sentences with this construction in a top-down way so far.

I'm pretty sure I would personally use different syntax to express the same meaning: 

Having worked tirelessly for years for working-class Americans, I...

As the son of penniless immigrants, I...


----------



## Dan2

tosamja said:


> There is an American song from 1963 in which the relative pronoun "who" is nicely implying a first person singular verb:
> 
> _*I, I who have nothing, I, I who have no one*_


Great song.  I recommend the Ben E. King or Luther Vandross version...

Look, I wouldn't walk into my local auto parts store and say, "I, who am repairing a 2008 F-150, need a ...".  That would get me very strange looks.  But neither is the construction heard as biblical or imitation-biblical style.  It fits fine in this song of the soul-music genre.  Some might use it in present-day formal writing (I wouldn't) or in speeches.  Language has many different styles and registers, even limiting ourselves to contemporary language.  What is OK in one style might sound ridiculous in another.


elroy said:


> _It is I who am in the wrong. _- I'm wary of making generalizations, but I'm 99%+ sure I would never use this in writing or in speech - no matter how formal the context - and I don't think I'm ever come across it in any non-archaic context - whether formal or informal.  It sounds entirely incorrect.


I too wouldn't use it myself.  Just the "It is I" part is something I'd never say.  But I disagree with the "(never) in non-archaic" and "entirely incorrect".  It's just very formal.  There are native-English WRF members who I could easily imagine writing, "After re-reading your post, I must admit that it is, in fact, I who am in the wrong."  (Of course, more common on WRF would be, "Sorry, it is _you _who are in the wrong.")  (But here too, note the verb agreement.)


----------

