Human vs. non-human distinction in pronouns

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gach
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Human vs. non-human distinction in pronouns

Post by gach »

It's common to have distinct elements for referring to humans and non-humans in certain pronominal categories: 3rd person and general anaphoric pronouns (he/she vs. it), reflexives (himself/herself vs. itself), interrogatives (who vs. what) and relative pronouns (who vs. which). Are there any examples of this distinction on other pronouns in any language? For example, if a language uses demonstratives in a logophoric function, could it be possible for it to have distinct human and non-human deictic elements?

I'm interested in pairs that aren't linked to a wider gender system.

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Re: Human vs. non-human distinction in pronouns

Post by gmalivuk »

Could it be possible? Even without knowing any specific examples, I can't imagine why not. If a language already makes the discinction with other pronouns and also has logophoric pronouns, it's certainly possible to maintain the same distinction there.

(Yeah, I know this hasn't added much, but now the thread is in my egosearch for future perusal.)

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Re: Human vs. non-human distinction in pronouns

Post by CaesarVincens »

So, in a language without grammatical gender, are there examples such as 'that.(human)' vs. 'that.(non-human)'? Is this what you are asking?

I don't know of any in particular, but most of my language knowledge comes from languages with grammatical gender anyway.

It seems like there would be at least a vestige of an animate/inanimate distinction in the language (similar to English's vestige of masc/fem/neut system).


Edit: on second thought, English itself has this distinction (not grammaticized though). 'I want them.' 'I saw them.' vs. 'I want those.' 'I saw those.'

For me it's more natural to assume that 'them' are people and 'those' are not. Though of course, either reading is possible.

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Re: Human vs. non-human distinction in pronouns

Post by gach »

CaesarVincens wrote:So, in a language without grammatical gender, are there examples such as 'that.(human)' vs. 'that.(non-human)'? Is this what you are asking?
More or less, though it's not at all necessary for the language to lack a gender system. A masculine ~ feminine distinction in grammatical gender is very different to a human ~ non-human distinction in pronominal reference as is an animate ~ inanimate system where the animate gender will be used for animals and even some naturally inanimate things, stuff very different from humans. You can in fact have a human pronoun and a non-human pronoun that agrees with the animacy of its referent.

Personally I find no reason why this distinction couldn't generalise to further pronouns, though the examples I'm aware of occur in the categories which seem most natural for it. The question is where do actual natural languages ultimately draw the line.
Edit: on second thought, English itself has this distinction (not grammaticized though). 'I want them.' 'I saw them.' vs. 'I want those.' 'I saw those.'

For me it's more natural to assume that 'them' are people and 'those' are not. Though of course, either reading is possible.
This approaches what I'm asking. You have different ways to refer to humans and non-humans. But rather than getting human deictics, this sounds like preferring personal pronouns for humans with the expense of loosing the deictic feature of the reference. The singular versions of your examples (only for see) would be "I saw him/her" and "I saw that", wouldn't they. The best evidence that the human versions don't have deictic reference in them is that you can't transform the sentences "I saw it", "I saw this" and "I saw that" into unambiguous human reference by using only pronouns and preserve any of the distinctions between them. Each will become "I saw him/her." Restoring the deictic element while unambiguously referring to a human will require the use of a human noun: "I saw the guy", "I was this guy" and "I saw that guy."

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Re: Human vs. non-human distinction in pronouns

Post by CatDoom »

I'm not sure if it's exactly the kind of thing you're looking for, but as I mentioned over in the odd features thread, Yurok has a complex system of suffixes that it attaches to numerals to mark agreement with nouns being counted. For instance, one would say something like [nɚhksɚʔɚjɬ knuːu] "three (of land animals or birds) hawks," but [nahksejl ʔoːɬ], "three (of humans) people." I'm fairly certain that these same forms can be used pronominally as well as adnominally.

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Re: Human vs. non-human distinction in pronouns

Post by CaesarVincens »

Spanish might have something like this (my knowledge of Spanish is limited).

The demonstratives have three singular forms.

este, esta, esto
ese, esa, eso

aquel, aquella, aquello (I think this one also)

The first two are masc, fem. The third is something else, but I don't think it can refer to humans.

Someone with better Spanish knowledge please confirm or disprove me.

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Re: Human vs. non-human distinction in pronouns

Post by cromulant »

WALS Chapter 43 may be relevant; see sections 1.5 and 1.6. Here's the map.

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Re: Human vs. non-human distinction in pronouns

Post by gach »

I like the Yurok system, but it's a quite much wider system of classificatory agreement from a plain human ~ non-human opposition.

The human ~ non-human distinction for the few pronouns is interesting since it's very persistent also in languages which otherwise don't have any gender or class marking systems. In my own colloquial variety of Finnish it's been lost from the general anaphoric pronouns (se, "he/she/it", and ne, "they", are used both for humans and non-humans) but is alive and doing well for the interrogatives kuka ("who") and mikä ("what"). The kuka ~ mikä opposition is the only instance of grammaticalised classification in an otherwise non-classifying language.
CaesarVincens wrote:este, esta, esto
ese, esa, eso
I need to refresh my Spanish a bit, but aren't these bound to the gender system of the language and obey gender agreement?
cromulant wrote:WALS Chapter 43 may be relevant; see sections 1.5 and 1.6. Here's the map.
That only talks about gender marking for demonstratives, not specific human deictics.

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Re: Human vs. non-human distinction in pronouns

Post by cromulant »

gach wrote:
cromulant wrote:WALS Chapter 43 may be relevant; see sections 1.5 and 1.6. Here's the map.
That only talks about gender marking for demonstratives, not specific human deictics.
"Gender" can include 2-way human/non-human contrasts; "demonstratives" are deictic. So, demonstratives that distinguish between human and non-human nouns (via gender markers which are shared with the pronouns) would seem to be an example of what you're looking for, unless I'm misunderstanding what that is.

I should add: my purpose in linking WALS was to provide leads, not solid examples of what you're looking for. I don't know the details of the gender systems in their samples; they may or may not include 2-way human/non-human contrasts.

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Re: Human vs. non-human distinction in pronouns

Post by zompist »

You can have gender in anything: demonstratives, articles, numerals, verbs, possessives, adverbs, prepositions.

And animate/inanimate is a very common gender distinction.

As for animate/inanimate demonstratives in particular, Nishnaabemwin has 'em.

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Re: Human vs. non-human distinction in pronouns

Post by CaesarVincens »

gach wrote:I need to refresh my Spanish a bit, but aren't these bound to the gender system of the language and obey gender agreement?
The first two are tied to the gender system, but I think the third (with -o) can be used for unintroduced or underspecified things. (not referring to a specific noun that is.)

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Re: Human vs. non-human distinction in pronouns

Post by Ketumak »

In English, demonstratives can stand for whole clauses:

They say it will rain tomorrow. I agree with that.

So you'd need to think how that would work with gendered demonstratives. You could have a separate neuter gender reserved for such occasions, or perhaps a different word entirely.

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Re: Human vs. non-human distinction in pronouns

Post by CaesarVincens »

Ketumak wrote:In English, demonstratives can stand for whole clauses:

They say it will rain tomorrow. I agree with that.

So you'd need to think how that would work with gendered demonstratives. You could have a separate neuter gender reserved for such occasions, or perhaps a different word entirely.
Or just use the neuter (perhaps in the plural).

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Re: Human vs. non-human distinction in pronouns

Post by gach »

Seems that everybody only knows examples that stem from gender marking. Gender is an obvious strategy to do these things and I'm specifically interested to look for the extent of the human ~ non-human distinction outside of a full gender system.
Ketumak wrote:In English, demonstratives can stand for whole clauses:

They say it will rain tomorrow. I agree with that.

So you'd need to think how that would work with gendered demonstratives. You could have a separate neuter gender reserved for such occasions, or perhaps a different word entirely.
In the case of human vs. non-human pronouns the human ones are the marked members of the pairs. With relative pronouns English already has a case where you have pronouns for both human and non-human reference and can also refer to whole clauses. When referring to a whole clause, you select a pronoun that's unmarked for the human feature:

They say it will rain tomorrow, with which I agree.

The human relative pronoun can only refer to humans:

I'm going out with the girl who just moved here.

[As an additional side track, there's an example with relative pronouns that's sort of along the lines of your suggestion of a separate word for referring to whole clauses. In normative Finnish there are two relative pronouns, joka and mikä. Joka is used to refer to any noun while mikä stands both for pronouns and whole clauses. Not quite what you wrote but gets close.]

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Re: Human vs. non-human distinction in pronouns

Post by Ketumak »

Interesting to read the different approaches languages have to representing clauses with demonstratives and relatives.

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Re: Human vs. non-human distinction in pronouns

Post by Terra »

This link is only somewhat related, but it's really good, and I think that some people would like it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pro-form

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Re: Human vs. non-human distinction in pronouns

Post by Ketumak »

Ah, yes. I found that one myself a while back. It's a good overview and checklist - helps you make sure you've covered all the ground.

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