Re: Ambiguity

On Mon, Jan 5, 2009 at 4:35 PM, Joel Heikkila <jjheik@...> wrote:
> On Sun, 4 Jan 2009 21:22:36 -0800, Roger Mills <romiltz@...>
> wrote:
>
>>How do various other conlangs deal with ambiguities like this? Has the
> problem arisen? How much attention is it really worth?
>
> Well, I've considered many times with Njenska of having multiple *sets*
> of third person pronouns... like he-1, he-2 (maybe more?) which address
> separate people/things and therefore help limit confusion in such cases.
> Thus:
>
>        Here is Jenny and here is Mary, she-2 feeds her-1 baby. -> Here
>        is Jenny and here is Mary, Mary feeds Jenny's baby.
>
> I'm pretty sure some natlangs have this feature, though I don't know
> what it is called.
I've seen secondary sets of 3rd person pronouns refered to as
"obviative" and as "4th person". The later may be somewhat misleading
but gives an obvious way to refer to tertiary, quarternary, etc, sets
if you've got them.



--
Andreas Johansson

Why can't you be a non-conformist just like everybody else?

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