Fourth person was Re: CONLANG Digest

On Fri, 26 May 2000, Muke Tever wrote:
>
>Are there any languages, (natural or homemade) that have a sort of double
>pronoun... ack, I don't know how to say it.
>
>Here:
>"He told him the truth about his mother."
        My terminology is a little rusty, but I would say that the words
you are looking for is "fourth person".

>From this in English we can gather that 'he' and 'him' are different people,
>but out of context we have no idea whether 'his' refers to the 'he' man or
>the 'him' man.  To make it clear in English would want something like:
>
>"He told him the truth about his (John's) mother."
>
>but would it be common (or practical?) for a language to mark _his_ to match
>the relevant pronoun, like:
>
>"He1 told him2 the truth about him2's mother."
        From what I gather, this sort of marking is relatively
common. Russian has it:

On  skazal jemu    pravdu o     jego matjeri.
He1 told   to+him2 truth  about his2 mother.

On  skazal jemu    pravdu o     svojej matjeri.
He1 told   to+him2 truth  about his1   mother.

Here, "svoj" (declined in the sentence to "svojej" to indicate the
prepositional case) shows that the subject is the owner. "Svoy" is
actually a very versatile word, and can appear in the first and second
person, as well as third person.

Ja ljublyu cvoju    zhjenu      OR      Ja ljublju moju zhjenu
I  love    my (own) wife                I  love    my   wife

Ty  ljubish' cvoyu      zhjenu  OR      Ty  ljubish' tboju zhjenu
You love     your (own) wife            You love      your  wife

BUT:

On ljubit cvoju     zhjenu
He loves  his (own) wife

On ljubit jego            zhjenu
He loves  his (another's) wife

One could get into potentially uncomfortable situations if one is not
careful... :)

        There are also languages that have a true "fourth" person. Can't
think of any off the top of my head, except for Enamyn, but I haven't
gotten around to specifying the details of what the fourth person will be
like. But I am sure that there are other nat- and conlangs that have this
very handy feature...
        :Peter