Paul O. BARTLETT | Re: [europidgin] Personal pronouns - The most simple solution

• Autor: Paul O. BARTLETT (“bartlett22183”)
• Tema: Re: [europidgin] Personal pronouns - The most simple solution
• Data: 2002-09-17 00:08
• Mesaje: 88 (a supra, presedente, seguente)

On Mon, 16 Sep 2002, europidgin wrote:

> I guess we all agree to that even in a very simple pidgin we want to
> be able distinguish between singular and plural and that we also need
> a way to show possession.

    To me here, the key is "a way," but that does not necessarily mean
it has to be by means of a separate word form.  As James Chandler
pointed out (he may already have left us), in some forms of British
English today one can say "me book."  Also, for whatever it is worth,
in another IAL, (IALA) Interlingua, 'tu' is used for both a nominative
second person singular personal pronoun and that same pronoun's
possessive.  If you consider the use of attributive nouns in English,
together with the above, I think we should give some thought to the
idea of having a single pronoun for each person and number, both
nominative and possessive, with propositions if needed for other
oblique usages.

> We can drop "io" and use "me". We can also drop "nos" and add a
> plural suffix "-s" to "me". We then have:
>
> I, me -- me
> we,us -- mes

    Because 'we' is not really multiple instances of 'I' and
'you-plural' is not really mutliple instances of 'you-singular',
personally I would be willing to go with a separate form kfor eash.

> [...]

--
Paul Bartlett
bartlett@...
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