English first person singular and plural verbs

Date 2008-11-22 22:06

Here's a challenge for you... Are there any verbs in English in which the first person singular and plural differ? Excluding the obvious exception of 'to be', I can't think of any.

The reason for this is I'm writing a document where I may need to change the number. So I write:
"\we thought this and \we did that and \we achieved the other"
and replace \we with "I" or "we" automatically as appropriate.

By phanghor Flag: gr

Date 2008-11-23 08:42

Can 'shall/will' be an answer to your question? Apart from these, I can't think of others.

By Thanos

Date 2008-11-23 11:19

Hmmm... I shall, we shall. I should have, we should have. I should be, we should be. I will, we will. I would, we would. Can't see anything wrong with those. Was there a particular example you were thinking of?

By phanghor Flag: gr

Date 2008-11-24 07:40

Forget it, Thanos. I made a mistake.

By gumboot Flag: gb

Date 2008-11-23 15:45

They're not always different in forms of the verb "to be" - just to be awkward, consider "aren't I" and "aren't we" :-)

By Thanos

Date 2008-12-22 17:28

[oops, wrote this ages ago and never got around to posting it]

Interesting, I've never thought about that. The following seem to work:
I am/we are
I am not/ we are not
am I not?/are we not?
aren't I?/aren't we?

But not:
are not I?/are not we?
am not I?

OED says 'aren't I' is a relative neologism, and cites:
1907 LADY GROVE Social Fetich 38 If ‘ain't I?’ is objected to, surely ‘aren't I?’ is very much worse.
1934 DYLAN THOMAS Let. 2 May (1966) 117 The first thing I would do..would be to peep, with a nasty aren't-I-a-lad expression, into the pages.
1946 K. TENNANT Lost Haven (1947) ii. 44 ‘Oh, Christ!’ Kelly moaned. ‘Aren't I telling you I aren't deserting you?’

Apparently 'am not I' was originally used, but it feels wrong today. Oh well... :-)

By Simon

Date 2008-12-22 22:10

Er...

Without wanting to be awkward...

I have used "am not I" and would consider it a perfectly sound construction. Perhaps I'm old fashioned!

"aren't I" I would regard as acceptable in spoken English, but I'd probably try to avoid it in the written form.

Returning to the original question - I can't think of any example other than "to be". That's probably the most irregular verb in every European language I've ever looked at (not that many - true), so it's maybe not surprising that it's the sole (as far as we seem to be able to gather) example in English of such an inflection.

But - why is "to be" apparently so generally irregular? Je suis confused...

Simon.

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