Eliminating Some Pronouns
Logan Kearsley
about getting rid of first or second person pronouns instead? Or both?
One could have a language that lacks grammatical person entirely; or,
perhaps more interestingly, one could have a language that lacks the
1st and 2nd person pronouns, but still retains grammatical person in
things like verb conjugation (maybe explainable as a creole).
As PIE got along along using demonstratives instead of the usual 3rd
person pronouns, one could replace 1st and 2nd person pronouns using
phrases based on words for speaker and addressee. 'I', for example,
could be "this speaker", and 'you' could be "the (current) addressee".
Those are not, however, exactly equivalent to the usual pronouns
because the same words could be used to refer to different people in
other contexts- "the speaker/addressee in that other conversation",
for example.
-l.
John W Kennedy
I believe there are a number of natural languages that do so.
--
John W. Kennedy
"I want everybody to be smart. As smart as they can be. A world of
ignorant people is too dangerous to live in."
-- Garson Kanin. "Born Yesterday"
Anonymous
A few random thoughts. If you are doing a Romance conlang in which
"quiero" means "I want" and "quiere" means "you want," obviously there
is no need to use the subject pronouns "yo quiero" or "tu quiere"
except in rare cases where emphasis is intended.
In formal Japanese it is best to avoid using a 2nd person pronoun;
better to use the other person's name or just leave the item implied
rather than stated. In casual/intimate Japanese you can choose between
several pronoun-like words: anata, anta, kimi, omae, each carrying
various nuances of social rank relationship between speaker and
addressee. Choose carefully: being too formal is just as insulting as
being too casual.
--
-30-
Klaus Scholl
> As PIE got along along using demonstratives instead of the usual 3rd
> person pronouns, one could replace 1st and 2nd person pronouns using
> phrases based on words for speaker and addressee. 'I', for example,
> could be "this speaker", and 'you' could be "the (current) addressee".
The magic behind words like "I" is recursivity. A quite useful magic.
But in natural languages
we don't make much use of it. The only ones(?) we have use are:
"I" (the current person),
"here" (the current place),
"now" (the current time),
"today" (the current day).
That's not much.
To use "this" for expressing new kinds of recursive notions is no proper
solution. It is a mere makeshit, vague and ambigous. We can't use it
without risking to be misunderstood.
Morris
> [...] obviously there
> is no need to use the subject pronouns "yo quiero" or "tu quiere"
> except in rare cases where emphasis is intended.
I'm not sure about total lack of pronouns, but I believe that this is
the norm for most polysynthetic languages.
> In casual/intimate Japanese you can choose between
> several pronoun-like words: anata, anta, kimi, omae...
Japanese is unusual in that the pronouns are open-class. Also, I
believe the third person pronoun "kare" literally translates to "this
guy".