Re: Recalled to life

En réponse à "Nathaniel G. Lew" <natlew@...>:

>
> I don't, but then again, neither do several major European languages
> ("you", "vous", "Sie", "vy" (Russ.)).  Especially with 2nd-person
> pronouns, I figure that number will be clear from context.
>
You're wrong about the examples you give. Among them, only English is a good
example. For French and Russian, you show the *polite* second person form,
which true enough doesn't separate singular from plural. But it is only used to
refer to unknown or ill-known people (and is losing ground). Most of the time
you'd use the normal informal pronouns, which do distinguish singular and
plural ("tu" vs. "vous" in French, "dy" against "vy" in Russian, and unlike
English "thou", the second person singular is still used a lot, and even wins
more and more use as politeness is getting out of fashion :))) ). As for the
German example, it's even worse, as the example you show is the formal pronoun,
which maps with the *third person plural*!!! Second persons are "du" and "ihr",
and are perfectly distinguished, not only by the pronoun but by the verb
conjugation. That's also the case of French and Russian.

You cannot use the polite forms from those languages to prove your point, as
their use is rather limited and nearly everywhere is losing ground (not sure
about Russia. But I'm pretty sure about France and Germany).

English is the only European language that doesn't distinguish singular vs.
plural "you" on a regular basis, although most English dialects have found a
way to distinguish singular from plural, showing that the distinction is
considered important.

> Nouns in Bendeh work that way - number is generally picked up from
> context
> (as I understand they are in Japanese)
True, but that doesn't include the pronouns, which when used always take the
suffix "-tachi" (or "-ra" for "kare": he/him) when used to refer to more than
one person. You won't find anyone referring to various people as "anata":
singular "you".

, although it is possible to mark
> it
> explicitly to avoid ambiguity -and I like having most of the pronouns
> work
> the same, since I don't in principle distinguish between parts of
> speech.
> One big exception is the 1st-person pronouns.  "I" and "we" feel to me
> like really different concepts, although I understand that several
> Asian
> languages just pluralize "I" for "we" or, if they have no plural, use
> the
> same word.
No. Most Asian languages just have a way to pluralise pronouns even if they
have no way at all to pluralise nouns. At worst, they will use reduplication or
specialise some pronouns for plural use and others for singular use.

  I guess I am just an individualist anti-communitarian
> American
> conlanger at heart ;-)  The other exception is with the third-person
> non-
> human (demonstrative) pronouns.  Those are both singular and plural in
> lots of languages, but I decided to put the strong (lexical)
> singular/plural division in the language there because it was the most
> elegant place in the system to put it.  Since those pronouns are used
> as
> articles, it makes separate inflection for number unnecessary.
>
True. And it's true that there are plenty of languages which just don't mark
plural on nouns. But even in those languages, and even when in those languages
pronouns pattern like nouns, number is always marked in some way on pronouns.
English is quite unique in having a 2nd person which doesn't distinguish
singular from plural, and the fact that most dialects of English have invented
a way to make this distinction, and use it nearly always mandatorily, shows
that it must be something people really find necessary.

Now, if your language really doesn't distinguish singular from plural in
pronouns, or only optionally, that's no problem. But don't try to say that most
European languages do so when English is alone in that matter (and then only
some dialects of English).

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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