zompist bboard

Travis B. wrote:

linguoboy wrote:I've already caught myself saying "they all" by analogy with "you all" to disambiguate when "they" really has multiple referents.

And I have caught myself saying we guys for the first person plural...

People do this all the time in Hindi.
[həm] 'we' (but historically 'I' and sometimes used with this meaning, especially in poetry I think)
[həm log] literally 'we people'

"we all live in the yellow submarine. yellow submarine. yellow submarine". Lyrics to a Beatles song.

Isn't that different, though? I'd think "we all" there meant 'all of us', not simply 'we'.

I thought the 2nd plural pronoun is actually being revived in American English - y'all is becoming more common outside the south, and those people who use y'all for 2nd singular are saying all y'all. In addition, you guys seems is considered "normal" in the northeast (probably will be standard there instead of y'all, but y'all could still be the standard in other non-southern dialects). The additional words all and guys are becoming attached to the plural forms, at least in disambiguation. It reminds me a bit of -pela in Tok Pisin.

mèþru wrote:I thought the 2nd plural pronoun is actually being revived in American English - y'all is becoming more common outside the south, and those people who use y'all for 2nd singular are saying all y'all. In addition, you guys seems is considered "normal" in the northeast (probably will be standard there instead of y'all, but y'all could still be the standard in other non-southern dialects). The additional words all and guys are becoming attached to the plural forms, at least in disambiguation. It reminds me a bit of -pela in Tok Pisin.

"Y'all" is never singular. The confusion happens when people hear people say to a single person "how are y'all doing?" They are referring to them and other people not present and people think they are using "y'all" as singular.

Fooge wrote:

mèþru wrote:I thought the 2nd plural pronoun is actually being revived in American English - y'all is becoming more common outside the south, and those people who use y'all for 2nd singular are saying all y'all.

"Y'all" is never singular. The confusion happens when people hear people say to a single person "how are y'all doing?" They are referring to them and other people not present and people think they are using "y'all" as singular.

I was just coming here to say the same thing. Honestly, the only time I've ever heard y'all with singular reference is when you have a Yankee trying to imitate a Southern accent and overdoing it.

"All y'all" is simply the equivalent of (Northern) "all you guys" or (Standard) "all of you", i.e. a plural pronoun with a totalitising quantifier.

Vijay wrote:Isn't that different, though? I'd think "we all" there meant 'all of us', not simply 'we'.

It almost seems like an intensifier to me--to really emphasize "all of us, yes, ALL."

(EDIT: although of course it can be filling multiple roles at once)

alynnidalar wrote:

Vijay wrote:Isn't that different, though? I'd think "we all" there meant 'all of us', not simply 'we'.

It almost seems like an intensifier to me--to really emphasize "all of us, yes, ALL."

(EDIT: although of course it can be filling multiple roles at once)

You can probably tell that it's not a plain plural in the song because of the metre. It's "WE ALL LIVE in a..."; that stress on the 'all' doesn't sit well with a purely functional pluralizer.

My husband (American born and raised) uses they almost exclusively when talking about someone he doesn't know personally. If he's talking about a celebrity or fictional character, for instance, I've noticed he may use he or she in the first sentence, and then revert to they for all following sentences. He generally doesn't do this about friends or family, however. This is not something he does consciously, and it's not something he learnt in college or on Tumblr. And his friend, who recently came out as genderfluid and prefers they as a pronoun he struggles with referring to as they consistently, despite the above, but in that case I think it's partially because they've know each other for so long but haven't physically met since this coming out about a couple of years. I'm pretty sure it would become very easy if the two of them spent some time together and that pronoun came up regularly. It's just a matter of loosening my husband's internal grammar for singular they a smidge.

I find myself reflexively using they to refer to people whose gender is unknown and to some people whose gender is known, without doing so consciously. (I will even refer to the same person with he or she and with they in the same conversation.) I do not do so to try to intentionally change language - as far as I can remember I always spoke this way, and I certainly am not a Tumblrite or one of their ilk.

Travis B. wrote:I find myself reflexively using they to refer to people whose gender is unknown and to some people whose gender is known, without doing so consciously. (I will even refer to the same person with he or she and with they in the same conversation.) I do not do so to try to intentionally change language - as far as I can remember I always spoke this way, and I certainly am not a Tumblrite or one of their ilk.

Which of these would you say?

"That person should do it themself".

"That person should do it themselves".

Fooge wrote:

Travis B. wrote:I find myself reflexively using they to refer to people whose gender is unknown and to some people whose gender is known, without doing so consciously. (I will even refer to the same person with he or she and with they in the same conversation.) I do not do so to try to intentionally change language - as far as I can remember I always spoke this way, and I certainly am not a Tumblrite or one of their ilk.

Which of these would you say?

"That person should do it themself".

"That person should do it themselves".

"That person should do it by 'emself".

In some dialects, us appears in the first person singular but only in dative roles (e.g. Give us a kiss!), which I find really interesting because I don't know of any other morphological separation of direct and indirect objects in English. It's not only after "give" either.

I also naturally use themself and was quite miffed seeing it corrected by a teacher in school.

Imralu wrote:In some dialects, us appears in the first person singular but only in dative roles (e.g. Give us a kiss!), which I find really interesting because I don't know of any other morphological separation of direct and indirect objects in English. It's not only after "give" either.

I think that's an artifact of the "royal we": "We are not amused".


It's worth noting that there are, as near as I've been able to tell, four different uses of the 1st person plural in English:
1. Inclusive we: "We (including you) are going to get some ice cream because all the chores are done"
2. Exclusive we: "We (excluding you) are going to the amusement park while you do homework"
3. Royal we: "We (meaning I) are not amused"
4. Roommate we: "We (meaning you) need to take out the trash"

Axiem wrote:It's worth noting that there are, as near as I've been able to tell, four different uses of the 1st person plural in English:
1. Inclusive we: "We (including you) are going to get some ice cream because all the chores are done"
2. Exclusive we: "We (excluding you) are going to the amusement park while you do homework"
3. Royal we: "We (meaning I) are not amused"
4. Roommate we: "We (meaning you) need to take out the trash"

Is the "Roommate we" related to the Medical we, i.e. "How are we feeling today?"? (A usage one of my linguistic professors characterised as "marked ++obnoxious".)

linguoboy wrote: Is the "Roommate we" related to the Medical we, i.e. "How are we feeling today?"? (A usage one of my linguistic professors characterised as "marked ++obnoxious".)

Perhaps. The first time I heard the joke formulated, it was specified as the "spousal we", so it's probably more of A Thing. I imagine it's not just an English thing, but I could be wrong?

I'm actually curious, now, if languages that distinguish inclusive/exclusive 1st person plural have the same sort of phenomenon.

I's also common between children and parents.

There's also the "editorial we", which led Mark Twain to the dictum that the only people allowed to refer to themselves as "we" are popes, emperors, and people with tapeworms.

The "authorial we" is an interesting case. Random example from the book I'm reading: "In chapter 3, we developed the notion of constituency." Some usages could be inclusive we— "we're on this voyage of discovery together!"— but this one is clearly singular; it's the author, not the reader, who developed the notion of constituency. Maybe it's psychological compensation for the fact that an author writes books totally alone.

zompist wrote:The "authorial we" is an interesting case. Random example from the book I'm reading: "In chapter 3, we developed the notion of constituency." Some usages could be inclusive we— "we're on this voyage of discovery together!"— but this one is clearly singular; it's the author, not the reader, who developed the notion of constituency. Maybe it's psychological compensation for the fact that an author writes books totally alone.

That must be an artifact of that it is rather deprecated for authors to refer to themselves with "I", so when they do have to refer to themselves they opt for "we".