Re: Fourth Person

At 9:57 pm -0500 4/10/98, Christopher Palmer wrote:
>On Sun, 4 Oct 1998, Hawksinger wrote:
>
>> Although they are not uncommon in North American languages, calling
>> them a 4th person is somewhat misleading and seems to be rarely done
>> anymore..
>
>Precisely.
Amen.

I have read through the flurry of posts about the so-called '4th person'
with varying degrees of amusement, amazement & frustration.  I suppose one
of the dangers of conlanging is that we can start giving the same
creativity as we give to language modelling to the defining of linguistic
terms.  This IMHO is not helpful.

The term 4th person is not normally understood to mean "one" (which in
English is certainly not used like 'on' in French - I don't enough German
to comment on the use of 'man' but I suspect it's closer to French 'on'
than it is to English "one") - period.

The term was (and by some, still is) used to refer to the _obviate_ 3rd
person found in some natlangs, especially some North American native
languages, where it is used to refer to an entity distinct from that
already referred to by the 3rd person form.  I agree with Chris Palmer &
Hawksinger that calling this a 4th person is somewhat misleading (as the
flurry of posts has IMHO shown  :)

In Classical Latin there was, strictly speaking, NO 3rd person pronoun
(except the reflexive 'se'); its role was played by one of _four_ different
demonstrative pronouns.  One could make out a case that Latin had 6
persons! Thus:
3rd - is, ea, id - normal, unmarked 3rd person.
4th - hic, haec, hoc - this person/thing near me (i.e. 3 + 1)
5th - iste, ista, istud - that person/thing near you (i.e. 3 + 2)
6th - ille, illa, illud - that [yonder] (i.e. 3 + 3)

But IMO this would be very misleading.

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And at 9:54 pm -0500 4/10/98, Christopher Palmer wrote:
>On Sun, 4 Oct 1998, Tom Wier wrote:
.......
>> "Deixis" in linguistics just means a degreed series of relationships,
>
>Right. Do you know of any natural languages with pronouns denoting graded
>discursive roles? "I, partially the speaker, am telling sort of you and a
>little of that other guy to get me a beer." :P
  :-D

>Deixis and discursive role are two different and non-covarying things.
If only......<sigh>

Unfortunately, 'deixis' is one of those ancient Greek words that some
jargon-monger took a liking to and used, and then the poor word got used
rather differently by different linguists.  In its original language BTW
its primary meaning was "proof", "method of proof".  But it could be used
as a grammatical term meaning "demonstrative reference", hence its use (and
abuse) in modern linguistics.

The term is used in linguistic theory to subsume those features of language
which refer directly to personal, temporal or locational characteristics
whose meaning is relative to the situation in which the speaker/writer's
utterance, thus 'now'/'then', 'here'/'there', 'this'/'that' as well as
'I'/'you' are called "deictics".   Just to add to the fun, some linguists
call them "exophorics", since the interpretation of these words require
reference to the extra-linguistic circumstances of the utterance (as
opposed to "endophoric" relationships which help define the structure of
the text).

Unfortunately, however, some linguists do use "deixis" also to refer to the
endophoric features of "anaphora" and "cataphora".  An anaphoric reference
marks the identity of what is being expressed with what has already been
expressed earlier in discourse, e.g. if "She did that there" related to my
previous sentence "Pamela wrote this novel in Spain" then 'she', 'that' and
'there' are anophoric.  Cataphoric reference, on the other hand, is
forward, contextual reference, e.g. in  "Here is the weather forecast for
the next 24 hours ......" the word 'here' functions cataphorically.  This
use of 'deixis' is quite different from exophoric use given in the
paragraph , and is sometimes called "discourse deixis".

'Deixis' may also be used by some to denote _social distinctions_ that
relate to participant roles (speaker-adressee etc) in features such as
pronouns, honorifics, vocatives & other forms of address.  This is more
properly "social deixis".

Thus one does need to be aware of the different uses of the term 'deixis'
and to be clear how it is being used in a particular context, otherwise
misunderstandings are inevitable.

Ray.

PS - in the last sentence 'one' = 'a person' & is, therefore, 3rd person  :)