Re: Apical pronoun in english?

En réponse à Danny Wier :


>I thought _on_ already fulfilled that function, a gender-nonspecific
>first-person pronoun. Of course it doesn't have a pure genitive form, so
>_d'on_ would be used.
Wow! So many incorrect things in one sentence, it's gonna take a while 
correcting all that :) .

OK, first thing, "on" is indeed gender-nonspecific, for that you're right. 
But "on" has only two uses:
- nonspecific *third person singular* pronoun, used when the subject is 
*unknown*, and usually translated with a passive sentence in English (or a 
sentence with "someone" as subject). It *cannot* be used when the subject 
is known, so is not a good candidate for an epicene pronoun.
- *first person plural* meaning (but still third person singular agreement 
with the verb). This use is acceptable only in familiar spoken French (and 
explicitely forbidden in formal written French). In this use, "on" is just 
synonymous to "nous": "we".

I cannot have other forms than subject because its first use is to indicate 
an unknown subject, while in its second use "nous": "us" and "notre": "our" 
is used for its non-subject forms.

To put it simply, the extent of "on"'s use makes it a very bad choice for 
an epicene third person singular pronoun.


>I usually just say "one", and it's very close to the aforementioned French
>word (though not related -- isn't _on_ derived from _homme_ "man, human"?)
AFAIK you're right.


>I agree; "it" belongs to inanimate objects.
Dutch has found a good solution for the problem: "die": "that one", common 
gender. It's used extremely often in speech, even in cases where the gender 
of the person is actually known, and it fits well because it is *not* 
neuter (the neuter form is "dat"). Seen how often it' used, I think we can 
say that Dutch has developped a true epicene third person singular pronoun. 
Yay for the Dutch! :)) (note however that I doubt they developped it out of 
concern for gender equality. It just happens that with its sound changes 
Dutch lost nearly all morphological marks of gender in masculine and 
feminine nouns - they share a single definite article "de", identical 
adjective agreement forms, etc... - Masculine and feminine nouns have just 
collapsed into a single "common" gender, at least in form. And people began 
to forget whether a noun is masculine or feminine. Still they needed a 
third person pronoun to refer to all those nouns, and they couldn't 
remember whether to use "hij" or "zij". So using "die" came only naturally, 
since it was already of the right gender, but didn't differentiate between 
masculine or feminine. I think Scandinavian tongues have also seen the 
collapse of masculine and feminine nouns together as one common gender. 
Have they also used the same strategy to provide people with a common third 
person singular pronoun?)

Christophe Grandsire.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang. 

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