h a l f b a k e r yPlease listen carefully, as our opinions have changed.
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Examples:
Tom, Dick, and Harry were disussing sports and he said that he had said that the Blues won't win this season, and he thought this was nonsense.
Tom te, Dick de, Harry he, were discussing sports and te said tha de said that the Blues won't win this season, and he thought this was nonsesne.
Jane,
Mary, and Sally were playing and she picked up her doll and threw it at her. She ran away crying.
Jane je, Mary re, and Sally she, were playing and je picked up re's doll and threw it at she. Je ran away crying.
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Annotation:
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Wait--so, Jane threw Mary's doll at Sally and then ran away crying? This plot is hard enough to follow as it is. |
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We three, te, he & me, see je, re & she. |
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Any idea involving pronouns is doomed to get fished on this site. I've learned the hard way. Not that your idea is so bad. |
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Susan, Sara, Sharon, Shannon, and some of their sorority sisters stayed up all night staring at the stars.... |
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yabba, you're hanging out with the wrong sorority sisters. |
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I couldn't keep the alliteration with that mindset. |
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"... stayed up all night sipping the schnapps", is what I
think actually happened. |
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Yeah, but why can't you just say: |
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Tom, Dick and Harry were discusing sports and Tom said
that Dick had said that the Blues won't win this season,
and Harry thought this was nonsense. |
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You already have un-vague identifiers, so why not use
them, instead of introducing new pronouns that you'll
never remember? |
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Having Joan and Jeremy in the same room blows you clever scheme out of the proverbial pronoun pool. Not to mention that under your system, Hannah will be referred to as "he" for the rest of her life. Tsk. (-) |
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And Shaquille will be she. |
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<does double take> ...and why is Mary "re" ? </ddt> |
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To avoid saying, "Mary me." |
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Somehow I think that Knut has a different concept of 'person' to that used in grammar/linguistics/whatever. |
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Just to try and sound clever; verbs in one of the Native American languages (Navaho?) decline for a 4th person which rougly equates to 'somebody'. |
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For the sake of pedantry, I should point out that this is not the fourth (or higher) person, it is a means of identifying which of several third persons is being referred to. First person = 'I' or 'me', second person = 'you', third person = 'someone else'. The problem is solved in legal documents by listing those involved and designating them as 'the party of the first (or subsequent) part'. Typically, legal statements use no commas. From the deeds to my house:
"INDENTURE of this date made between Edward Harris of Saltburn by the Sea in the N. R. of the County of York Shipowner and Albert WIlliam Smith of Darlington in the County of Durham Gentleman of the 1st part Thomas Garry of Aycliffe in the said County of Durham Railway Agent of the 2nd part and Thomas Edward Bowser Bates of Darlington aforesaid Licensed Victualler of the 3rd part." |
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As [oxen_crossing] noted, introducing custom pronouns for each noun doesn't make much sense. |
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However, different flavours of pronouns (masculine and feminine, or singular and plural) can be used to unambiguously refer to certain nouns in a sentence, depending on the context. For example, if you introduce an shopkeeper and his employees, it is clear to whom "he" and "they" refer. |
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The problem occurs when the context is such that two nouns are be represented by the same pronoun; for example, a mother and her daughter are both referred to in the third-person, singular, feminine form. Two inanimate objects form a pair of "its." |
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Now I like a nice pair of its as much as the next guy, but I think that subjective and objective forms of pronouns should be added to the English vocabulary for these particular situations in order to respectively refer to the subject and object of a sentence. Such pronouns would have a strict sentence-level scope, so that they would never be confused for nouns introduced in the previous sentence. They probably wouldn't find much use outside of legal documents, either; they would mostly find use in compressing the sort of terse, technical writing style that has to be parsed with a pencil in hand. |
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