"My father's mounted guard"

Roy C. Lackey · 15 Oct 2008, 02:03 · from 2008-October.txt.gz

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From: rclackey at stic.net (Roy C. Lackey)
Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2008 21:03:06 -0500
Subject: (urth) "My father's mounted guard"
References: <W331911973101511224003491@webmail31>
Message-ID: <002401c92e6a$30da6540$1dd14a0c@rclackey>

Son of Witz" wrote:
> I've come to agree with this perspective.
> However, if there are other such sentances in the first two books, I must
have missed them. Has anyone another such example?<<

 And later:

>He's got her memory from the corpse eating, and because he can't forget,
her memories just mingle in with his.  There are other moments where he
slips into Thecla mode, but it doesn't usually screw with the subject/object
structure of the sentence.<<

Well, there are other times when the subject switches from singular to
plural in the same sentence, when the described action is clearly Thecla's
alone. Immediately after ingesting her flesh, penultimate paragraph of
chapter XI, CLAW:

"Just when I despaired--she was there, filling me as a melody fills a
cottage. I was with her, running beside the Acis when we were a child.
[etc.]" Note the plural pronoun "we", but the singular "child".

Also, when Severian spoke to small Tzadkiel, he told her  "... of my
childhoods in the Citadel, at my father's villa, and in the village called
Famulorum near the House Absolute." (URTH, chapter XL, 284) Obviously, the
memories are, in order, Severian's, Thecla's and the Old Autarch's.

-Roy

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