First and second mentioned pronouns

[jack]

Merging "He" and "She" makes lots of sentences more ambiguous. A common idea is to instead of having 'male' and 'female' have 'first and second'. "He insulted him and he hit him" is a bit ambiguous. "He1 insulted him2 and he2 hit him1" isn't. Doesn't one of the cool artificial languages do that?

But it occurred to me -- that's exactly how geeks use "foo" and "bar". What other innovations do we have already that we didn't notice? :)

Comments

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I suspect laziness would tend to trim off some of the extra markers over time. For instance "He1 insulted him2" could be trimmed to "He1 insulted him" (or "He insulted him2") without losing information if there were only two masculine nouns already in context.

Then again, -1 and -2 are rubbish suffixes, I assume you're only using them as examples anyway. and instead of suffixes you might just have several entirely different sets of masculine pronouns and deduce the binding from which set was used, end up with e.g. "He insulted lui and il hit him" supposing we invented the extra ones by borrowing from other languages.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, I'm sorry, "he1" and 'he2' were just supposed to be a placeholder for the pronouns we don't have, like your 'he' and 'il'. Suffices indeed wouldn't be the way to do it.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Assuming you're Jack you seem to have become anonymous l-)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Yep. I *finally* have a new broadband account. And I forgot I wasn't logged in on my home computer.

[naath.livejournal.com]

Extra pronouns are superflous. Names work well (unless you are talking about Matthews) as do generic variables 'so guy X hits guy Y and then Y thumps X on the nose *then* Y grabs X and is going to throw him to the foor when Z comes in a breaks it up' makes perfect sense.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Yeah, we should have a Matthew pronoun system, or something.

Yeah, we get along ok, the idea is probably impractical. But you could make the same argument about names about our current pronouns, and it does get repetitive especially with long names.

I like the letters. It's like what you automatically do online. But in a way they are pronouns...

[naath.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, it's what I do in text. I do the same when speaking though if I'm not talking about named individuals.

Matthew's are; MHF, MD, Matt and Matthew. Which makes it easier. There are other multiple-people-with-same-name that are harder.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Matthew's are; MHF, MD, Matt and Matthew.

Yeah, I suppose that works. I tend to resort to just saying "Matthew" louder and louder until it becomes clear :)

[ewx.livejournal.com]

It occurs to me to wonder if grammatical gender started out as response to the ambiguity of third person pronouns (or at least partly so).

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

That would make sense. You could think of more logical solutions, but that'd be a relatively easy transition.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I wonder which of nouns and pronouns came first?

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I quick google didn't help. I guess it'd be too far back to know, you'd have to study primitive languages and see.

If you're miming, which is easier, indicating 'me' or 'you' or indicating another person? I'm not sure.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Mimed indications of another present person (or thing) are as easy as "me" and "you", I would have thought; you just point. And this could be used to support a hypothetical spoken language with no nouns at all. But if you start to talk about absent people or things then I think you pretty unavoidably need nouns.

Also, humans are really good at telling what each other are looking at (and AIUI pretty unusual in having the very contrasty eye coloring that aids this). So perhaps our pre-noun ancestors may not have used fingers to point, but their eyes?

Pronouns today seem like an optimization, which would lead to one imagining that they postdated nouns; but one way you could imagine them arising is as a sound to accompany (and ultimately replace) those physical pointers.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Yep. But OTOH you can easily see a lot of me/you coming from context, which wouldn't count. I couldn't see anythign conlusive.

Pronouns today seem like an optimization, which would lead to one imagining that they postdated nouns; but one way you could imagine them arising is as a sound to accompany (and ultimately replace) those physical pointers.

Definitely. Probably more of a grammatical convenience to consider pronouns as special nouns, I can certainly *imagine* it going the other way.

[calamarain.livejournal.com]

There's always the gender-neutral pronouns that tend to be used in various scientific essays - shi, hir, etc.

[(Anonymous)]

Ah. I've come across several attempts at (just one) neutral pronoun (none of which I particfularly liked, but tend to default to e/er/eir when necessary), but no that one, thanks.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I've always considered "they" to be a perfectly good GNP. The usage is only six hundred or so years old though so I suppose it's a bit soon to expect it to be widely accepted...

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

To me it still sounds odd when used to represent a specific person rather than an indefinate of some sort.

"Everyone loves their mother" sounds fine.
"Who's that person? I can't even see if they're a man or a woman." still ok.
"Leslie doesn't like people to know if they're male or female" sounds odd to me.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Surely that oddness would apply to any GNP though, not just 'they'?

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Actually, somehow a new word isn't as annoying to me as an old word used 'wrongly'.

*Would* you use it like that?

[ewx.livejournal.com]

rysmiel really doesn't want you to know what biological gender they are.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Don't they? Hmmm, maybe it does sound ok. Did my example sound at all odd to you?

[ewx.livejournal.com]

The Leslie example sounds funny because the 'they' wants to bind to 'people' rather than 'Leslie', which makes it sounds like Leslie has a really bizarre social policy they're planning to impose when they become dictator. Apart from that... not really l-)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

"Leslie wants to keep it secret if they're male or female." Better. OK, I expect I'll give up on this one sooner or later.