Mandarin pronouns (ta1) [Was: a question about names]

John Cowan wrote:

> Mark J. Reed scripsit:
>
>
>>Among natlangs, I'm given to
>>understand that the Mandarin 3rd-person singular pronoun used to be
>>genderless, but modern Mandarin (under Western influence, I presume) has
>>introduced a specifically-female version while continuing to use the
>>genderless to refer to males - which seems a step backwards
>>sexual-equity-wise, IMHO.
>
>
> Only in writing: the 3rd person pronoun is still ta1 for animates and
> (normally) zero for inanimates; applying ta1 to inanimates is a product
> of translationese.
Or a necessary strategy where the syntax requires a pronoun. Li &
Thompson give an example (4.138):

He2lan2 di4fang4 fei1chang2 xiao3 wo3men zhi1dao ta1
Holland place    unusually  small we      know   3sg

de    jing1ji4 wen4ti2 bu  jian3dan1
ASSOC economy  problem not simple

"Holland is a small country. We know its economic problems are
not simple".

Though L&T further note: "As a general rule, the third person
pronoun, ta1, serving as a topic or as a topic that also functions
as a subject does not refer to an inanimate entity"

ObConlang: My current project, Tiemish(1), as the attached URL
suggests, is broadly inspired, nay stolen, from Mandarin. It's
the closest thing to a relex I've done. OTOH, it's intended as
something straight-forward that I can easily write texts in and
become familiar with, and later it will serve as the mother of
a very unruly brood of ill-behaved and unusably-complex conlangs :)

http://ataltane.net/conlangs/chineselikelang.html

s.
--
Stephen Mulraney  ataltane@ataltane.net  http://ataltane.net
This post brought to you  by the letter 3 and the number 0xF

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