Friday, April 15, 2011

Dromiceiomimus explains exclusive-we

... better than me?? Here's her explanation.



Here's mine:

Number and person [on pronouns] interact in interesting ways. One example is the first person plural (‘we’/’us’), which usually picks up from context a set containing the speaker and sometimes but not always containing the hearer too. Some languages mark this inclusive-we/exclusive-we distinction linguistically, either on the verb, or with different forms of the pronoun. For example in Taiwanese, ‘góan’ means we-excluding-you and ‘lán’ means we-including-you. (Allott 2010, p. 57)


T-rex's exclusive-you is not, as far as I know, lexicalised or otherwise encoded in any language, and, not unconnectedy, I suspect, it seems impossible to use 'you' to communicate it.



Allott, N. (2010). Key Terms in Pragmatics. Continuum.

1 comment:

nick said...

I suspect that T-rex's grasp of historical linguistics is a bit shaky, by the way.