Some questions to get ideas

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rsprawls2
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Some questions to get ideas

Post by rsprawls2 »

I'm working out gender pronouns for an alien language, but I had a thought...

Is there any cases of human languages where the 1p, s "I" changes according to gender, so instead of a male and female both referring to themselves as "I", it would be different depending on the gender?

Sorry if this is in the wrong forum, but I just realized there doesn't seem to be a delete function.

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Re: Some questions to get ideas

Post by Qwynegold »

Didn't Hebrew do this? Astraios will surely be here soon to answer.
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Re: Some questions to get ideas

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Re: Some questions to get ideas

Post by gach »

As always, it's a good bet that you'll find examples of strange grammatical features on New Guinea. Here's an example taken from Foley's book "The Papuan languages of New Guinea".

The Ngala language from the Sepik area has the following set of personal pronouns (with M = masculine and F = feminine)

Code: Select all

   SG.M  SG.F   DL       PL
1  wɨn   nyɨn   əyn      nan
2  mɨn   yɨn    bɨn      gwɨn
3  kɨr   yɨn    (kɨ)bɨr  rər
So while in the higher numbers (dual and plural) the language doesn't make a gender distinction, it has it in all persons of its singular pronouns. In addition to distinguishing gender in first person singular, the language is strange in not making a distinction between singular feminine listener and singular feminine third person.

You can actually find even a third strange thing about the gender specific pronouns of Ngala if you compare them to the pronouns of the related language Iatmul. The Iatmul personal pronouns are

Code: Select all

   SG.M  SG.F   DL    PL
1  wɨn   wɨn    an    nɨn
2  mɨn   nyɨn   mpɨk  nkwɨk
3  ntɨ   lɨ     mpɨk  ntɨy
This is an interesting set as itself, but the really interesting thing for us here is the correspondence between Iatmul 2SG.F nyɨn and Ngala 1SG.F nyɨn. Based on this data it seems likely that the Ngala first person singular feminine pronoun is derived out of an older second person pronoun.

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Re: Some questions to get ideas

Post by prettydragoon »

This isn't quite what you asked, but Hindi marks the gender of the subject on the verb. But, as it happens, not on pronouns. So actually it's not at all what you asked, it's more like the polar opposite of what you asked, but it's a different way of showing the gender of the first person.

If I were to tell you what I am doing right now, I would say:
मैं आपको उत्तर लिख रही हूँ।
Maĩ āpko uttar likh rahī hū̃.
maĩ āp-ko uttar likh rah-ī hū̃
1S.NOM 2P.OBL-ACC reply write stay-PP.F be.PRS.1S
I am writing(f) you a reply.

But, since there are no girls on the Internet, I should rather say:
मैं आपको उत्तर लिख रहा हूँ।
Maĩ āpko uttar likh rahā hū̃.
maĩ āp-ko uttar likh rah-ā hū̃
1S.NOM 2P.OBL-ACC reply write stay-PP.M be.PRS.1S
I am writing(m) you a reply.
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rsprawls2
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Re: Some questions to get ideas

Post by rsprawls2 »

gach wrote: So while in the higher numbers (dual and plural) the language doesn't make a gender distinction, it has it in all persons of its singular pronouns. In addition to distinguishing gender in first person singular, the language is strange in not making a distinction between singular feminine listener and singular feminine third person.
That actually makes some sense, since you can't assure your group will be all male or all female, but you can be certain of your own gender identity. This works for me as at least some of the races are going to be inclusive, but still respectful of identity.

Thanks all, this give me more options.

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Re: Some questions to get ideas

Post by Astraios »

Hebrew doesn't do this in fact. It has a masculine and feminine form of all the second- and third-person pronouns, but the first-person pronouns are gender-neutral.

(At least one dialect of Jewish) Neo-Aramaic does it, though in verbs rather than pronouns: 1sm -ın- 1sf -an-.

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Re: Some questions to get ideas

Post by Ser »

Your source shows it didn't.

For a moment I thought some Arabic dialects had this distinction in the personal pronouns, but it seems I was dreaming that up too.

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Re: Some questions to get ideas

Post by 2+3 clusivity »

I believe you are looking for this: http://wals.info/feature/44A.

Also consider pragmatically it doesn't make much sense to mark the gender of second person and escpecially first person pronouns since they are already known qualities. I think this is very different from marking gender on the verb of things that happen to be first or second person, because in that case the marking--as I understand it--is used for cross referencing purposes--not for establishing the identity of the substantive.
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Re: Some questions to get ideas

Post by masako »

Serafín wrote:
Your source shows it didn't.
I guess I'm missing something...the question was - I thought - about gender in the 1SG...Hebrew did in fact do this, according to the source I used...

I checked in "An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew syntax" By Bruce Kenneth Waltke, Michael Patrick O'Connor and saw the same thing...

Maybe I misread the question.

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Re: Some questions to get ideas

Post by rsprawls2 »

Serafín wrote:
Your source shows it didn't.

For a moment I thought some Arabic dialects had this distinction in the personal pronouns, but it seems I was dreaming that up too.
Astraios wrote:Hebrew doesn't do this in fact. It has a masculine and feminine form of all the second- and third-person pronouns, but the first-person pronouns are gender-neutral.

(At least one dialect of Jewish) Neo-Aramaic does it, though in verbs rather than pronouns: 1sm -ın- 1sf -an-.
That's odd, because Serafin's link appears to show a change of 1SG pronoun according to gender when it is the subject of a clause. It does go on to say that it's not often used, but it does show the standalone 1SG pronoun is gender specific, but a gender neutral suffix otherwise.

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Re: Some questions to get ideas

Post by Satsuma »

I'm surprised Thai hasn't been mentioned yet. Phǒm for men, dìchán for women, though it changes depending on formality. I believe the forms I mentioned are neutral. Japanese also distinguishes based on gender for some registers too.

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Re: Some questions to get ideas

Post by Astraios »

No, Hebrew does not have gender in either of the first-person pronouns. You're reading the table on the Wiki page wrong - there's no dividing line between masculine and feminine in the first person boxes. The pronoun is either ani or anokhi, not masculine ani and feminine anokhi, or whatever you think it says. (And neither ani nor anokhi was historically used only for masculine or feminine either. A quick Google search tells me this is a common misconception among mystics and pseudoabrahamic spiritualists.)

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Re: Some questions to get ideas

Post by zompist »

I don't know Hebrew, but I can read a grammar; I'm not sure why some folks are seeing a gender distinction in the 1st person.

Since Wikipedia was cited, note that as Serafin says, the cite shows no gender distinction. Don't be confused by the two forms; as Astraios points out, they share a merged cell. The distinction was not by gender.

The source Masako mentioned, Waltke and O'Connor, is online: http://www.areopage.net/PDF/waltke.pdf It agrees; see section 16.3. There are only "common" forms in the 1st person.

Finally, I checked Robert Hetzron's sketch in The World's Major Languages; he states right off "No gender distinction exist for the first person."

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Re: Some questions to get ideas

Post by Salmoneus »

Satsuma wrote:I'm surprised Thai hasn't been mentioned yet. Phǒm for men, dìchán for women, though it changes depending on formality. I believe the forms I mentioned are neutral. Japanese also distinguishes based on gender for some registers too.
Depends what you mean by "gender". In terms of what the OP is asking, these are probably good examples (as are many languages where 'pronouns' are numerous). However, linguistically they're apparently not considered to have gender distinctions, because there is no agreement.
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Re: Some questions to get ideas

Post by Soap »

Too bad that map doesnt break out the "1st person" and "2nd person" languages, or singular vs plural. I was wondering why Spanish was listed but then I realized it's probably talking about nosotr(o/a)s and vosotr(o/a)s.

Nevertheless, if only 1 language in the whole world does it it's proof that it's not unnaturalistic to use in an Earth-like culture's language, and certainly okay for an alien language.

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Re: Some questions to get ideas

Post by masako »

Ah, I see now...I misread the tables. Oops.

Thanks for the help everyone.

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Re: Some questions to get ideas

Post by Ser »

Soap wrote:Nevertheless, if only 1 language in the whole world does it it's proof that it's not unnaturalistic to use in an Earth-like culture's language, and certainly okay for an alien language.
The WALS article linked to by 2+3 clusivity has Ngala and Korana as examples.

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Re: Some questions to get ideas

Post by masako »

Wikipedia article

The above lists various words used as pronouns in Japanese. They do vary by region and dialect, but they also are used to indicate gender.

A few terms are confirmed in "Japanese grammar" By Nobuo and Carol Akiyama

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Re: Some questions to get ideas

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2+3 clusivity wrote:Also consider pragmatically it doesn't make much sense to mark the gender of second person and escpecially first person pronouns since they are already known qualities. I think this is very different from marking gender on the verb of things that happen to be first or second person, because in that case the marking--as I understand it--is used for cross referencing purposes--not for establishing the identity of the substantive.
I agree for the 1st person sg. - situations where it is unclear who the speaker is are probably rare (the examples I can think of concern written texts where speakers may change without it being indicated who the speaker of a certain utterance is.) But in the 2nd person, a gender distinction may help to determine who out of a group is being addressed. That's probably why there seem to be more examples of a gender distinction in the 2nd person than in the 1st. (And in the 1st person plural, a gender distinction may be marginally helpful in determining who is included in the "we" besides the speaker.)

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Re: Some questions to get ideas

Post by rsprawls2 »

masako wrote:Ah, I see now...I misread the tables. Oops.

Thanks for the help everyone.
Yeah, I also misread it. Strange though to have two possibilities on that table related to gender pronouns, but it's not the case.

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Re: Some questions to get ideas

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rsprawls2 wrote:
masako wrote:Ah, I see now...I misread the tables. Oops.

Thanks for the help everyone.
Yeah, I also misread it. Strange though to have two possibilities on that table related to gender pronouns, but it's not the case.
How else would you indicate two interchangable forms?
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Re: Some questions to get ideas

Post by rsprawls2 »

Drydic Guy wrote:
rsprawls2 wrote:
masako wrote:Ah, I see now...I misread the tables. Oops.

Thanks for the help everyone.
Yeah, I also misread it. Strange though to have two possibilities on that table related to gender pronouns, but it's not the case.
How else would you indicate two interchangable forms?
Well, English has "I" and "me," but "I" is subjective and me is objective, whereas both of the Hebrew forms are subjective. So then, under what condition would one be preferred over the other?

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Re: Some questions to get ideas

Post by Astraios »

Ignoring the fact that the English forms are irrelevant, and the fact that it tells you right beneath the table, 'anokhi' is archaic.

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Re: Some questions to get ideas

Post by clawgrip »

As far as Japanese goes, there are two informal, male first person pronouns that are very commonly used among speakers of all ages (informally or in a position of clear superiority only). Women very often use the most basic first person pronoun, which is completely gender-neutral and neither highly formal nor particularly informal. There is a female-only version that is an abbreviation of the regular one, but it is somewhat young-sounding and becomes progressively less common as the speaker's age increases.

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