Re: Second person/polite pronouns (fuit Re: Another Ozymandias)
| From: | Paul Roser <pkroser@...> |
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| Date: | Thursday, July 27, 2006, 15:20 |
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On Wed, 26 Jul 2006 16:26:46 +0200, Benct Philip Jonsson
<bpjonsson@...> wrote:
>A language may distinguish number, and person,
>in its pronouns without distinguishing number/person
>in its verbs. In fact it is quite common. To go
>only to my front yard (ha, I love standing set
>phrases on their head!) Swedish has lost all person
>and number distinction in verbs (using the erstwhile
>third person singular throughout), but preserved its
>personal pronouns. I wonder if the opposite --
>number/person distinctions in the verb but not in
>pronouns -- even exists.
I can easily envision a polysynthetic language where person & number marking
are on the verb and pronouns have dropped from the language or evolved into
something else (but what? emphatic markers, perhaps?), and I'd be willing to
wager that there are natlangs that have gone to polypersonal marking of the
verb with only pronouns for speech act participants, but I'm having
difficulty envisioning a language with a pronoun that doesn't distinguish
person or number...
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