Re: About persons

Tuomo Sipola wrote:


> Inclusive 'we' refers to the speaker and the listener.
> Exclusive 'we' refers to a group of speakers.
> Thus plural 'you' refers to a group of listeners.
> This form would be inclusive.
> And then 'they' has to be exclusive 'you'? It excludes
> the listener just like the exclusive speaker.

In Lojban there are six personal pronouns:

        mi    I
        do    you (singular or plural)
        mi'o  I and you but not others
        mi'a  I and others but not you
        do'o  you and others but not I
        ma'a  you and I and others

Any of these can be plural, even "I" if the speaker is speaking
for a group:  "We, the jury, find the defendant guilty"
could be expressed using "mi".


> And you can always stick dual into this...

There is a natlang, the name of which I forget, which has a
very neat scheme of pronouns:

                          singular    dual                plural
speaker and listener     ---         thou and I          we (inclusive)
speaker, not listener    I           he/she/it and I     we (exclusive)
listener, not speaker    thou        he/she/it and thou  you
neither one              he/she/it   they two            they

Trying to fit this into the traditional scheme of first, second, third
person just causes confusion.  Note that the 12th possibility
is unfilled: in the nature of things, there cannot be a singular
pronoun which represents "speaker and listener", unless you use
it to refer to yourself when talking only to yourself, which is
hardly a possibility that's likely to be grammaticalized.


> How should these persons be numbered? Is there some standard
> for exclusive and inclusive 'we'?

Generally one speaks of in/exclusive 1st person plural.

--
There is / one art             || John Cowan <jcowan@...>
no more / no less              || http://www.reutershealth.com
to do / all things             || http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
with art- / lessness           \\ -- Piet Hein

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