Re: THEORY: The fourth person

Date:    Wed, 28 Apr 2004 18:28:38 -0500
From:    Danny Wier <dawiertx@...>
From: "Jean-François Colson" <fa597525@...>

> From: "Thomas R. Wier" <trwier@...>
> > > Lots of languages have something like it.  I can't actually speak
> > > to how they work in Athapaskan languages, but in Algonquian languages,
> > > there are specific verb forms for an unspecified and generic entity
> > > (noted as "X").
> >
> > Is that somewhat similar to the French pronoun "on", the German "man", the
> > Dutch "men", etc.?
>
> I don't think so in the case of French; don't know about German or Dutch.
German _man_ works the same way (and has the same origin:  _on_ comes
from Latin _homo_ 'man', and German _man_ comes from German _Mann_).

> The French pronoun _on_ corresponds to third person masculine singular; the
> verb is not conjugated any differently than if the subject was an _il_ or
> _elle_.
Yes, it has that verb inflection, but I think the question was asking
about its functional use.

> I wonder if there could be such thing as a FIFTH person... maybe in
> bitransitive verbs, like something translating to "he sent him to him"?
This is not hard.  Person is a form of deixis; it points out entities
in a discourse.  In Algonkian languages (well, at least Meskwaki), there
are distinct verb forms for an obviative NP acting on another obviative
NP (not the proximate NP).  This could be seen as fourth person acting
upon fifth person.

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Thomas Wier	       "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police don't get it right
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