Re: THEORY: English Pronouns (was Re: THEORY: Ergativity and polypersonalism)

On Mon, 24 Jan 2005 19:25:39 +0100, Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
wrote:

>And the pronoun in the second example "should" be 'who', otherwise you
>have the aforementioned stylistic clash.
I thought that pronouns as objects of prepositions *always* took the
accusative form.  But I could be wrong. :b

>I think this is what happened in Italian, where the third-person
>masculine/feminine singular and third-person plural personal pronouns
>are usually "lui"/"lei" and "loro" (both originally accusative) in
>colloquial speech, even for the nominative (which "should be"
>egli/ella and essi/esse).
>
>For the polite form, I think this is universal: always "Lei", never "Ella".
>
>See also http://www.manuscritto.it/Lui_lei_essi_loro.html and
>http://www.learnitaly.com/italiano_parlato.htm .
Great example! :)

I've thought about doing some kind of future English that has
been "globalized" and thus gutted of its few remaining inflections.  So,
for example:

1sg    mi
2sg    yu or ya
3sg-m  him
3sg-f  ha or shi
1pl    as
2pl    yal
3pl    dem

I also imagine that such a "future English" would acquire one or more new
devices for distinguishing verbs and nouns from each other.  Again, looking
at how modern-day Creoles do it is probably the best idea.

- Rob

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