Re: Recalled to life

On Mon, 14 Oct 2002 23:44:03 +0200, Christophe Grandsire
<christophe.grandsire@...> wrote:

>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 stand corrected.  Still, strictly speaking, inclusive "we" means "I and
you (and possibley they)", and exclusive "we" means "I and they".  So I
find it semantically odd to form the word for "we" by pluralizing the word
for "I", as if it meant "lots of me's".  It brings to my mind images of
cloning: the Boys from Brazil, perhaps, could quite logically use such a
pronoun.

>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).
Fair enough, but you mistook my point.  I wasn't trying to make a global
statement about the pronouns in those European languages, just to point
out that there are numerous examples of individual 2nd-person pronouns
that have both singular and plural meanings.  The European examples were
ready at hand, because I have actually studied all those languages more or
less.  Whatever the (severe) limitations on the use of you, vous, Sie, and
vy are in actual speech situations, when used correctly there is almost
always enough information in the grammatical and pragmatic context to
determine whether the intended meaning is singular or plural.  From that
fact, I deduce that it just isn't that hard to figure out if a person is
addressing an individual or a group.

- Nat

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