Re: Kinda NATLANG: English stupidities: "You both"

En réponse à Neo <NeoVirus@...>:

> Where the heck did that come from? And its sad that it is proper
> grammar.. Any comments?
>
What is stupid about it? I find it pretty useful on the contrary. "You" is an
ambiguous pronoun with number, and it's just normal that people want to find a
way to specify to how many people they are talking to, just like they want to
say "us both" or "them both" for the same reason. It can be pretty useful and
is nothing ungrammatical. It's pretty normal in English to have pronouns
followed by a quantifier or assimilated (see "you all" for "all of you", "you
both" for "both of you", and more idiosyncratic things like "you people" to
insist on the plurality of the "you" without wanting to specify that it's about
everyone - I wonder why *"you many" is not used -). And since English, though
lacking a dual number, has still lots of remnants of the dual number present in
Old English (like "both" and "neither" corresponding to plural "all"
and "none", or the use of "former" and "latter" instead of "first" and "last",
or the use of the comparative instead of a superlative with a superlative
meaning when only two things are compared), it's just normal that the pronoun
system adopts a way to mark duality as well as plurality in all persons,
despite the initial lack of number of "you".

If there are English "stupidities", it is not one of them. It's rather a useful
disambiguating tool.

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

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