Quote:
Originally Posted by poli
Leo means I read. It is superfluous to precede leo with yo unless the speaker needs to be emphatic. In English, we are required to use the pronoun because the word read alone does not say enough.
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English has probably gone full circle here. One theory is that the inflected endings of Indo-European verbs used to be personal pronouns tagged onto them. So Greek agapa
ō (I love) is constructed from agapa + eg
ō. (The imperative is usually the shortest form of verb because it needed no pronoun added.) Those languages sensible enough to keep these endings thus already had the personal pronouns inside the verb. Those that lost the endings had to reconstruct the personal pronouns.
The Greeks also had debates about the personal pronoun eg
ō, and the theory was that the word expressed the self naturally because when pronounced, it forced the head or jaw to point to the chest/heart which was considered to be the seat of emotions.
Sorry, perhaps this is irrelevant.
