Re: Second person/polite pronouns (fuit Re: Another Ozymandias)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Roser" <pkroser@...>


> 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...
Well, Sie in German (takes same verbal ending as sie plural)... a huge
confusion to me always in spoken German.  Context is all. What about the
increasing use of "they" in English to mean both "one" and "they"?  Except
there is usually an antecedant for the first to clarify meaning:  "When a
someone wants to get into graduate school they have to compete pretty hard.
They often have a hard time finding just what they want."

I guess a conlang could do the same, using context, and specify only animate
and inanimate in its pronoun.  Pronouns usually do have antecedants.

Sally

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