THEORY: language and philosophy [was Re: A question andintroduction]

"Thomas R. Wier" wrote:
> Knowing how many people are involved may be important; knowing how
> old someone is may be important; knowing what their social rank is
> may be important; but knowing someone's religious, philosophical
> or political affiliation appears never to have been important enough
> for people to want to, say, use distinct pronouns for such social
> differences.
A friend of mine whose conworld contains several sentient species, one
of her conlangs uses different sets of pronouns for each sentient
species, so that, for example, there's "I (elf)" "I (human)" "I
(dwarf)", etc., in all 3 persons.  I wonder just how realistic that
would be.  Some languages do have distinct 1st and/or 2nd person
pronouns by gender, but I know of none that distinguish race.  The elven
pronouns are used as the generic pronouns.

--
"There's no such thing as 'cool'.  Everyone's just a big dork or nerd,
you just have to find people who are dorky the same way you are." -
overheard
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