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Consensus, the Navajo, and Fourth-Person Pronouns
1
...one.
Not a perfect match, but it is sometimes used that way. Often used with hypothetical terms such as were, could, would.
Not a perfect match, but it is sometimes used that way. Often used with hypothetical terms such as were, could, would.
2
@1: Was going to say the same thing.
There is something quite similar in French with the use of on. It conjugates in the third person but is one step further removed from il or elle. Strictly speaking it refers to a hypothetical individual but in practice it serves as a nuanced way to distance the speaker from a proposed action "On pourrait dire...", one could say, with a Gallic shrug.
There is something quite similar in French with the use of on. It conjugates in the third person but is one step further removed from il or elle. Strictly speaking it refers to a hypothetical individual but in practice it serves as a nuanced way to distance the speaker from a proposed action "On pourrait dire...", one could say, with a Gallic shrug.
4
The impersonal shows up in English all the fucking time. For example "It rains."
French: "Il fait beau."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impersonal_…
French: "Il fait beau."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impersonal_…
5
@3 - Navajo society is matrilineal and property, including the flocks, horses and trucks, generally is owned by the women, who allow the men to ride/drive, etc. When Navajo marry, the groom goes to live with the bride's family/clan.
6
That's fascinating. Hell, we don't even have a plural "you" in our language. We have a long way to go before making it tow fourth person.
9
Sorry to dump on your teacher, Brendan, but this is the kind of horse-hooey that makes linguists roll their eyes so hard their eyeballs hit the top of their skulls and give them a concussion.
Witherspoon may have his facts correct about Navajo culture; he may have his facts correct about Navajo grammar. But the two probably have sod-all to do with each other. For some examples of how attempts to connect grammar and culture are almost always wrong, start with these:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=…
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=…
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=…
For more, on the Language Log website you can click on "Categories," select "Language and Culture," and browse.
Witherspoon may have his facts correct about Navajo culture; he may have his facts correct about Navajo grammar. But the two probably have sod-all to do with each other. For some examples of how attempts to connect grammar and culture are almost always wrong, start with these:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=…
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=…
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=…
For more, on the Language Log website you can click on "Categories," select "Language and Culture," and browse.
10
Before anyone gets fancy with interpreting an external culture's pronouns, maybe they should join the modern age and use gender-neutral pronouns in academic papers?
Also @9, that's news to me. I think the Lacanians, the Saussurians, and the Levi-Straussians (that's an ugly form) would really strongly disagree with your links. Hell, Habermas would disagree with that claim in some fundamental ways. This isn't a settled dispute in the realm of anthropology, philosophy, psychology, or social politics. I doubt it's as settled as all that in linguistics.
Also @9, that's news to me. I think the Lacanians, the Saussurians, and the Levi-Straussians (that's an ugly form) would really strongly disagree with your links. Hell, Habermas would disagree with that claim in some fundamental ways. This isn't a settled dispute in the realm of anthropology, philosophy, psychology, or social politics. I doubt it's as settled as all that in linguistics.
12
@10: Actually, analytic philosophy, cognitive psychology, and linguistics are all pretty much unanimous that links between language and culture/thought have been way overblown, and the vast majority of them are (provably) false. The exceptions, which are the focus of serious and careful research, tend to involve spatial or numerical cognition, which do seem to scaffold off of language.
Anthropology, sociology, and continental philosophy have yet to get on the clue bus about this. Part of the reason they are so behind-hand is exactly the behavior you demonstrate -- appealing to self-styled authorities (as if we're supposed to be persuaded because Saussure said it from his armchair) rather than looking at actual data.
Anthropology, sociology, and continental philosophy have yet to get on the clue bus about this. Part of the reason they are so behind-hand is exactly the behavior you demonstrate -- appealing to self-styled authorities (as if we're supposed to be persuaded because Saussure said it from his armchair) rather than looking at actual data.
13
@1 @2 exactly.
However, it is very hard to write a book in French using such non-gender words. I remember when Elizabeth Vonarburg tried it. Still have the painting of her cat from the convention where she won an award for it.
@11 correct. You can still see the root in the German from which we got it.
However, it is very hard to write a book in French using such non-gender words. I remember when Elizabeth Vonarburg tried it. Still have the painting of her cat from the convention where she won an award for it.
@11 correct. You can still see the root in the German from which we got it.
14
"[forth-person pronoun] really sucks. No no no - I didn't mean YOU. Did I SAY I meant you?"
And here they say Seattleites are passive aggressive!
And here they say Seattleites are passive aggressive!
15
UM IS NO ONE EVEN GOING TO POINT OUT THAT THE PASSAGE TALKS ABOUT VERB FORMS, NOT PRONOUNS!? There's a dif.
16
The fact that we don't have a separate grammatical form for this doesn't mean that we don't have conventions. For example, it's actually pretty rude to refer to a person by name in their presence in English (at least where I come from - as I was brought up, if you have something to say *about* someone, you should say it *to* them), but they do it all the time in Chinese, and it freaks me out.
Like L. Margaret says above, the presence or absence of a grammatical feature doesn't say much at all about a culture.
Like L. Margaret says above, the presence or absence of a grammatical feature doesn't say much at all about a culture.
17
Indian languages are quite advanced. I once had a discussion about Mayan languages being extremely regular with a Guatemalan. We were talking about them as related to Esperanto, a supposedly regular language intended to be the international language, which nevertheless has many irregularities and copies French. I felt that, after studying micmac, a maritime north american language, that Indian languages could be adapted and transformed into an international language, or at least a common language for all people in the Americas to speak. It would sort of honor the Natives, and we could discuss things in a neutral language with people in latin america. Here are some micmac verb forms:
http://tinyurl.com/c4yhqo6
http://tinyurl.com/c4yhqo6
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