No Person

[dfiller]

Perhaps instead of person one could use distance. When talking about yourself you'd use the pronoun for someone very near but for other people or things it can vary. That could probably be as successful as person!

[Vuvuzela]

Perhaps instead of person one could use distance. When talking about yourself you'd use the pronoun for someone very near but for other people or things it can vary. That could probably be as successful as person!

John breaks a cup.
John: [near] broke a cup.
Sally, in another room: [far] broke a cup

Still expresses agency relative to the speaker. It's still essentially person, just split along the lines of (1st+2nd+proximal 3rd vs. distal 3rd) rather than (1st vs. 2nd vs. 3rd). Might make for an odd person system, but it would still be a person system.

[Sevly]

It's still essentially person, just split along the lines of (1st+2nd+proximal 3rd vs. distal 3rd) rather than (1st vs. 2nd vs. 3rd). Might make for an odd person system, but it would still be a person system.

Not quite. The distinction is actually first vs nonfirst, where nonfirst is further specified by spatial deixis. For example, if your friend is sitting next to you and you point at the guy accross the room, then you'd say Does near see far? for "Do you see him?". On the other hand, if you're talking to your friend on the phone about the the annoying guy sitting beside you, then the same meaning would be expressed as Does far see near?.

As long as there's a distinction between the speaker and someone supernear to the speaker, however, then you do still have that first vs nonfirst distinction. If, on the other hand, speakers use the same pronoun for themselves and for agents who are practically on top of them, then you've escaped person for real.

[Xephyr]

By 'pre-determined' property, I mean that it's agreed on in advance what property or properties should be used as primary identification of individuals. Two different approaches to this would seem feasible. One is to use objective properties. Refer to everyone, by, say, their height - "the six foot two one punched the five foot eight one" and so forth. The other is to use relative properties. So, "the tallest one punched the third-tallest one". This has the fun feature of being highly context-dependent (a taller person walks into the room and everyone else's "name" changes!), but it isn't person-dependent (the utterance does not vary if you change the speaker or the listener), so it's not a form of grammatical person.

The latter example doesn't meet your requirement of context-independence. If a man and a woman are in a room and another woman enters, then all of a sudden "she" and "her" don't cut it anymore to distinguish who is being referred to. For that matter, "you" can also become ambiguous if the audience changes. Does this make "he", "she", and "you" not pronouns at all, but instead "relative property pointers"? Of course not. I get what you're saying here, but I don't think the example you thought of quite counts as completely avoiding pronouns.

Btw, the suggestions Hallow has been going up against haven't been either of the things you suggested, but ridiculous systems using "this/that person" or "the speaker/listener". So he's not wrong.

[Salmoneus]

By 'pre-determined' property, I mean that it's agreed on in advance what property or properties should be used as primary identification of individuals. Two different approaches to this would seem feasible. One is to use objective properties. Refer to everyone, by, say, their height - "the six foot two one punched the five foot eight one" and so forth. The other is to use relative properties. So, "the tallest one punched the third-tallest one". This has the fun feature of being highly context-dependent (a taller person walks into the room and everyone else's "name" changes!), but it isn't person-dependent (the utterance does not vary if you change the speaker or the listener), so it's not a form of grammatical person.

The latter example doesn't meet your requirement of context-independence. If a man and a woman are in a room and another woman enters, then all of a sudden "she" and "her" don't cut it anymore to distinguish who is being referred to. For that matter, "you" can also become ambiguous if the audience changes. Does this make "he", "she", and "you" not pronouns at all, but instead "relative property pointers"? Of course not. I get what you're saying here, but I don't think the example you thought of quite counts as completely avoiding pronouns.

I didn't say that it avoids pronouns - I said that it avoids person. He and she and you are personal pronouns because they change depending on who the speaker is and who the speaker is speaking to. If you had, say, relative height pronouns, they would not be personal pronouns, because they would not change depending on who was speaking and who was being spoken to, but only depending on how tall people were.

(Also, although this isn't really about person so is a tanget, the height-relative pronouns would be relative in a way that the gender-absolute pronouns are not. If a second woman enters the room, gender-absolute pronouns may become ambiguous, but they do not become incorrect. Whereas using the 'tallest' pronoun for someone after a taller person has entered the room would not be ambiguous, but would be incorrect. Because 'she' is still a 'she' even if there is another 'she', whereas 'tallest' is only 'tallest' if there is NOT someone taller. But as I say, this is a tangent - you can have absolute or relative pronouns (although obviously our current mainstream gender notions are inherently non-relative), and you can have personal or non-personal pronouns)

Btw, the suggestions Hallow has been going up against haven't been either of the things you suggested, but ridiculous systems using "this/that person" or "the speaker/listener". So he's not wrong.

He is wrong, because he said outright that "I have been saying for quite some time now that "you can have a language without personal pronouns or markings for person" is untrue". Whereas in fact it's true. And actually one example of this had already been given.
I acknowledged that he was not wrong in the specific arguments he was having with people who were not getting it. But he was wrong in his overall claim.

[KathTheDragon]

I am so using this for my next conlang.

[Hallow XIII]

He is wrong, because he said outright that "I have been saying for quite some time now that "you can have a language without personal pronouns or markings for person" is untrue". Whereas in fact it's true. And actually one example of this had already been given.
I acknowledged that he was not wrong in the specific arguments he was having with people who were not getting it. But he was wrong in his overall claim.

Wait, wait, what? When did I say that? What I WAS wrong in claiming is that in order to be personless you have to stop referencing participants altogether, as in my exuberance I overlooked the possibility of being non-indexical about it. But I did not say what you say I said, good Sir.

[HandsomeRob]

One of my languages has no words, and no way to convey meaning.

[Salmoneus]

He is wrong, because he said outright that "I have been saying for quite some time now that "you can have a language without personal pronouns or markings for person" is untrue". Whereas in fact it's true. And actually one example of this had already been given.
I acknowledged that he was not wrong in the specific arguments he was having with people who were not getting it. But he was wrong in his overall claim.

Wait, wait, what? When did I say that? What I WAS wrong in claiming is that in order to be personless you have to stop referencing participants altogether, as in my exuberance I overlooked the possibility of being non-indexical about it. But I did not say what you say I said, good Sir.

Er... that's a direct copy-paste. From, you know, a couple of posts back. You then went on to quote someone saying that a personless language was possible and replied "This. Is. Wrong." (in bold) and "Jesus Christ people why is this so hard?".

You haven't even edited the post - it's still right there.

Least competent attempt at denial ever?

[Hallow XIII]

Hmm, true. I missed that when I looked back because I didn't notice the double quotes.

Anyway I reject ever having meant to say exactly that and instead blame it on being infuriated at the time. See also excessive font size.

[Matrix]

This is why I stopped letting myself get infuriated years ago.

[Pole, the]

I think remember reading somewhere that some languages don't differ 2d and 3d person.

So the difference is between speaker and non speaker. (Perhaps, to quote a movie, "it puts the lotion on its skin.")

I guess you could have 1st/2d v. 3d and have a speech act participant v. non-speech act participant distinction.

Eliminating any sort of distinction seems difficult, other than, perhaps, having people going around saying existential nothings.

IIRC that is not attested in "some languages". It is attested in "a language", and that language is not a full language - it's a semi-ritual register of another language, viz. Damin (which is a register of Lardil).

Aren't you forgetting about sign languages?

[Yng]

All the sign languages I'm familiar with have 1p-2p-3p distinctions, with multiple possible 3p referents distinguished by their placement in the signing space and 1p/2p indicated by pointing to the speaker or the listener. I guess you could argue that the 2p referent is just another position in the signing space given to 'the listener' in a given context, but since it corresponds with the listener's actual physical position (whereas 3p referents seem to be arbitrarily assigned) I'd say there's a 1p-2p-3p distinction, no?

[Nesescosac]

All the sign languages I'm familiar with have 1p-2p-3p distinctions, with multiple possible 3p referents distinguished by their placement in the signing space and 1p/2p indicated by pointing to the speaker or the listener. I guess you could argue that the 2p referent is just another position in the signing space given to 'the listener' in a given context, but since it corresponds with the listener's actual physical position (whereas 3p referents seem to be arbitrarily assigned) I'd say there's a 1p-2p-3p distinction, no?

'

Actually, most sign linguists accept only a 1p-non1p distinction - this is due to the fact that 1st person pronouns often conventionalize much more than 2nd and 3rd person pronouns do, as well as similarities in verbal morphology between 2nd and 3rd person, as well as the fact that signers who learn spoken languages later often mix up 2nd and 3rd person pronouns.

[Pole, the]

Btw, I once wrote a feline language with no person distinction, just with a generic pronoun meaning "one / cat / a meowing person" (as opposed to beings of other species, not speaking the language). But hey, cats (at least in that setting) are not a very talkative species, so hell could it work!

[Drydic]

Btw, I once wrote a feline language with no person distinction, just with a generic pronoun meaning "one / cat / a meowing person" (as opposed to beings of other species, not speaking the language). But hey, cats (at least in that setting) are not a very talkative species, so hell could it work!

Plus cats communicate so many things we use full sentences for through glares...

[Risla]

Coincidence: I was just over in the C&C questions thread and had typed out "Is it too implausible for a language to not make a distinction between second and third persons on the basis of speech-act participanthood, but rather make use of a similar distinction based on proximity or some other sort of spatial deixis?". Got distracted from that tab and just read what's going on in here now.

[Linguist Wannabe]

Japanese is kind of like this. People actively avoid using pronouns, and it is extremely common, and in fact preferable, to use a person's name, title, etc. rather than a pronoun. Use of one's own name instead of a pronoun is standard among children (and women trying to sound cute). Also, pronouns, other than being deictic, behave no differently from other nouns. They can take relative clauses quite naturally, and have their origin on regular nouns. And because of this, there is a kind of pronoun treadmill, where old pronouns eventually stop getting used, and new ones appear.

Actually not just Japanese, but a ton of other East Asian languages e.g. Thai, Vietnamese, Korean.

[Melteor]

Salmoneus, that impredicative pronoun idea is cool.

I don't see how Damin works without being significantly dependent on gesture.

In the analysis of Liddell I don't think the ASL pronouns are really treated as morphemes as such but gestures, which was emphasized. They do show up with number and inclusivity markers though.

...as well as the fact that signers who learn spoken languages later often mix up 2nd and 3rd person pronouns.

Neat!

[TehranHamburger]

It's quite common actually. Japanese for instance does not have person. Finnish in fact has four persons, the fourth or zeroth person in Finnish signifies an unspecified empty thing. In Japanese there is technically no person since person is absolute, first person always refers to the speaker or a group the speaker is part of, second person always to the addressed and third to neither. In Japanese what are commonly called 'pronouns' are technically nouns in their own right and they are fluid. For instance 'boku' is commonly used as humble form of 'I' for males, but it is also commonly used by females to address males with 'you'. In that sense it's not a personal pronoun.

In some polynesian languages, even though personal pronouns exist, they are rare and if a teacher addresses a student she would not say 'I told you to make your homework' as much as 'the teacher told the student to make the homework.'. As in the role in which you are saying it is emphasized.

I personally almost never incorporate person in languages because I think it's silly. I typically rely on the polynesian system above.