Re: Mixed person plurals

--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, tomhchappell wrote:
>About your "ordinal affixes" idea;
>Here is a quote from
>http://www.geocities.com/ceqli/Texperanto.html
>where a similar goal is accomplished;
>
>The names of the letters are: af, bet, ce, del, ep, foy, gam, hac, ic, jey,
>kap, lam, mim, nan, om, pi, qa, ro, sig, taw, up, vay, waw, xin, yot, zed
>They are used as names of letters, of course, and (since a trend began in
>the late 20th century) they are also used as anaphora, i. e. as pronouns
>that refer back to the last word that begins with that particular letter.
>Example: Me donis karno ad la leono. Lam manjis kap. (usually just written
>as "L manjis k.")
>
>Of course, Texperanto is not a natlang, but...
Ah yes, Texperanto. I like the idea, but it clearly needs a few more rules -
like, what happens if a new word beginning with the same letter as the main
topic is mentioned? Can the topic override a sidetrack, or can any
non-sequitur mention demand that the topic is again mentioned by its full
name?

One solution is that the name could be mentioned to such extent that it can
be exactly identified. Consider a discussion with the following set of
topics (and their identifiers)
horses (h)
mice (mi)
marsupials (mar)
mammoths (mammo)
mammals (mamma)
If the topic of hamsters (ha) were brought up, horses would become "ho". If
marmosets (marm) were brought up, marsupials would become "mars"... when the
topic of mammals were done with, mammoths would became "mam" ... etc

Still, this does not circumvent the problem that someone tuning into the
conversation midway through would not know what exactly is being talked
about.


> > [snip]
> > I also think "mixed singulars" could perhaps imply
> > 2 persons, and "mixed > dual" 3 ("me and two others"). Does this make
>any sense??
>
>There appear to be languages where "I and thou" is singular, "I and you
>two" is dual, and "I and you three" is trial or paucal.
>In other words, the "Inclusive" person (where both the speaker and (one or
>more) addressee(s) are meant) takes its grammatical "number" from how many
>addressees are included, not from how many people are meant in total.
>So, yes, I think what you propose makes sense; it's a more-or-less
>obvious-in-retrospect generalization of something which actually happens in
>natlangs.  (AFAIK, though, nobody ever thought of generalizing it before,
>and your idea is something that doesn't happen in a natlang.  I'd be
>pleased if some other contributor could show examples that relieved my
>ignorance, if such it is, in this matter.)
Good to know. I actually did mean primarily the 1st person cases; with eg.
the 2nd+3rd person pronoun, there would be no less than three distinct
"duals" of this form - one with two 2nd persons, one with two 3rd persons, &
one with two of both. This sounds needlessly complex to me, so I'll probably
skip the dual on such cases. The one-of-each form will still be
grammatically a singular, tho.


>What do you mean by "4th person", exactly?
>
>Sometimes "4th person" means "obviative"; like, "the 3rd person who is
>further away, as opposed to the 3rd person who is closer."
>Sometimes "4th person" means "the latter", where "3rd person" means "the
>former".
>Sometimes "4th person" means "a 3rd person (in a subordinate clause) who
>was a participant in the superordinate main clause."
>And since I'm no expert, I'll bet there are others, because AFAIK there
>could be.
>Which one do you mean?
I explained this already in my first post on this topic, but the distinction
between my 3rd and 4th persons is such that a 3rd person is present (can
hear what is being said), but a 4th person isn't. So probably closest to the
first of your choices.
Actually, I think it might be more obvious if I used the terms "2,5th" and
"3,5th": the 3rd person is used instead of the 2nd in one-way communication,
such as when addressing the reader in a book.
Say, does anyone know if there exists a system to classify all the persons
more accurately?

John Vertical

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