Re: Is it necessary to distinguish inclusiveness in possessivemarkers?

Quoting Nik Taylor <yonjuuni@...>:

> Andreas Johansson wrote:
> > If it's not used in English (or some yall-free variants thereof), it's
> either
> > not necessary, or English isn't a usable language. The later position does
> > seem somewhat hard to defend.
>
> Well, it's no less necessary sg/pl in 1st or 3rd person.  Sure, you
> *can* avoid it, but you can also avoid it in 1st person.  Avoiding it
> just in 2nd person seems rather English-like.
I've already suggest that my feeling that a sg~pl distinction is least
necessary in the 2nd person may be more due more to me being Germanic than
anything else, and I've _not_ said the distinction is absolutely necessary in
the 1st or 3rd.

Anyway, the rational argument for it being less important in 2nd is that it
should usually be obvious from context who are included in the addressed
party, but may be less so whether the speaker is speaking for him-/herself
only, or on behalf on a group, while making some extra distinctions in the 3rd
seems to be highly popular generally, presumably since it allows operating
with multiple 3rd pronouns simultaneously - it's more common wanting to refer
to 'him', 'her', 'it' and 'they' in the same sentence than to 'we[1]', 'we[2]'
and 'I' (let's forget 'bout 'I[2]', shall we?).

                                                   Andreas

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