Re: Is it necessary to distinguish inclusiveness in possessive markers?

Costentin Cornomorus wrote:

>--- Trebor Jung <treborjung@...> wrote:
>
>
>
>>I guess sg/pl for 2p is unnecessary, so it's
>>scrapped now.
>>
>>
>
>Hardly unnecessary! Clearly inclusion/exclusion
>is important to the culture that speaks this
>language. Now tha's making it impossible for me
>to include/exclude certain of my listeners!
>
>Why does tha think English has half ass patches
>like "y'all" to begin with?
>
>
>
I suppose part of it is a natural result of hijacking number
distinctions for politeness distinctions.  Sometimes.  After people
started to get all polite to everyone, the singular just vanished, I
suppose.  To be etymologically correct, perhaps 'y'one' would make more
sense.  ;-)

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