Pronouns as nouns

[alice]

Can anyone provide any examples of languages in which pronouns are indistinguishable from regular nouns?

[Zju]

I thought Japanese is a well known example of this? With many other languages of (South)East Asia doing a similar thing.

[zompist]

I've often been suspicious of those claims about Japanese, as they seem to confuse etymology for morphosyntax. E.g. ぼく boku comes from Ch. 僕 'servant' (Tang *bhuk). But it doesn't mean 'servant' when used as a pronoun— quite the opposite, it's an informal-to-rude male pronoun. And what do the no-pronouns people make of 我が waga 'my'?

But what is undeniable is that Japanese uses transparent forms for pronouns, unlike most IE languages; that pronouns are an open-ended class that includes titles; and that pronouns are rather frequently replaced.

The same is true of Portuguese. E.g. the formal pronoun is (m) o senhor 'the mister', (f) a senhora. A century ago this was only part of an absurdly complicated system— things like 'your great excellency'. And o senhor replaced vossa mercê 'your mercy' as the formal pronoun, as the latter had replaced simple vos. Meanwhile vossa mercê > vosmecê > você > cê, now an informal pronoun.

For a simple noun replacing a pronoun, you don't have to further than French on, which derives from Latin 'man'. It's long been used as an indefinite pronoun, and for half a century has been used in place of nous 'we, us '.

[Richard W]

I thought Japanese is a well known example of this? With many other languages of (South)East Asia doing a similar thing.

I can think of a couple of Thai pronouns that don't work like nouns:

• มัน /man˧/: The dictionaries just describe it as a 3s pronoun, but I've notice it being used to resume a complex subject, as in sequences <complex subject> man˧ <verb>... I've not noticed a noun being used like that.
• เอง /ʔeːŋ˧/: Roughly speaking, a reflexive pronoun, but also used to emphasise the subject, in phrases very like English 'I did it myself'.

Syntactically, most Thai pronouns are rather like proper nouns (one method for ducking the minefield of pronouns). I don't think one can easily use them with demonstratives.

Thai classifiers can be used rather like pronouns, I think with some behaviours like English 'one'. However, they stand out as a special type of 'noun' because they can be used freely with demonstratives and cardinals, whereas ordinary nouns often need the aid of a classifier in such constructions.

[missals]

I've often been suspicious of those claims about Japanese, as they seem to confuse etymology for morphosyntax. E.g. ぼく boku comes from Ch. 僕 'servant' (Tang *bhuk). But it doesn't mean 'servant' when used as a pronoun— quite the opposite, it's an informal-to-rude male pronoun. And what do the no-pronouns people make of 我が waga 'my'?

But what is undeniable is that Japanese uses transparent forms for pronouns, unlike most IE languages; that pronouns are an open-ended class that includes titles; and that pronouns are rather frequently replaced.

I'm not familiar with Japanese at all, so I may be misinformed, but I remember reading that Japanese pronouns do have syntactic properties that make them more "noun-like" than e.g. pronouns in most of IE. Namely - there may be more, but I only recall this - that pronouns can be modified by adjectives in the same way as nouns.

E.g. in English you have:

The little children ran down the street.

But

*Little them ran down the street.

While apparently, in Japanese, the equivalent of "Little them" or "Tall him" or "Intelligent she" is possible, meaning that the pronouns never fully lost their noun-like properties in the course of grammaticalization. Though, it would be great to hear from someone who knows more about Japanese on this matter.

[Creyeditor]

Can anyone provide any examples of languages in which pronouns are indistinguishable from regular nouns?

Several varieties of Indonesian can use kinship terms (ibu 'mother', bapak 'father', etc.) and sometimes proper names as pronouns. These can also be used for first and second person. This is a bit different from what Japanese does and more similar to what many people use in child-directed speech, I guess.

In Balinese, pronouns (and proper names) can be modified by possessors and by demonstratives. They behave different for binding purposes though, IIRC.

[Linguoboy]

E.g. in English you have:

The little children ran down the street.

But

*Little them ran down the street.

But you do have "poor pitiful me", "lucky him", "stupid them", etc. I've never seen anyone try to define exactly which adjectives can be used to modify pronouns in English, but it's pretty clear there's some kind of cline here.

[Kuchigakatai]

But what is undeniable is that Japanese uses transparent forms for pronouns, unlike most IE languages; that pronouns are an open-ended class that includes titles; and that pronouns are rather frequently replaced.

The same is true of Portuguese. E.g. the formal pronoun is (m) o senhor 'the mister', (f) a senhora. A century ago this was only part of an absurdly complicated system— things like 'your great excellency'. And o senhor replaced vossa mercê 'your mercy' as the formal pronoun, as the latter had replaced simple vos. Meanwhile vossa mercê > vosmecê > você > cê, now an informal pronoun.

In Latin American Spanish there's some use of el señor / la señora as the basic title to be used in the 3rd person, and as a term of address in the 2nd person too with the article removed. This also happens with the other educational titles, as well as with the title + surname combination. Ingeniero, ¿cómo le ha ido? 'Engineer, how have you been?' Or, Ingeniero González, ¿cómo le ha ido?

In Mexican Spanish there is also a use of un servidor "a servant" as a humble formal 1SG pronoun, and in El Salvador su servidor "your servant". I'm not sure if women ever use the feminine versions, since I've only ever heard men using them. Dunno about other dialects.

Of course, unlike the Japanese, Spanish speakers don't go out of their way to avoid personal pronouns. It is practically never inappropriate if you want to use yo, usted, ellas, etc. instead of un servidor, licenciado 'holder of a commercial/administrative bachelor's degree', las señoras, etc.

(The way things permeate between LatAm Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese, I imagine most or all of this is probably true in that language too.)

For a simple noun replacing a pronoun, you don't have to further than French on, which derives from Latin 'man'. It's long been used as an indefinite pronoun, and for half a century has been used in place of nous 'we, us'.

Homō meant 'person' in Classical Latin as a genericized use of 'man', or 'a human' as opposed to the gods or animals. Etymologically it's related to a word for earth, soil, the proper word for 'man' being vir (generally with a positive connotation; the Lewis & Short dictionary mentions the opposition of viri optimi 'the best men' vs. homines improbi 'immoral men'). Hominem etiam frugi flectit saepe occasio 'Chance often bends even an honest person (homo frugi)' (1st c. BC, Publilius Syrus), tamen moriendum fuit, quoniam homo nata fuerat 'She was to die regardless, as she had been born a human' (1st c. BC, Servius Sulpicius, in Cicero Ad Familiares IV.5).

In Late Latin, it acquired a particular very generic usage, close to English 'humanity' (or indeed like the old-fashioned use of generic 'man' without an article, as in 'The stupidity of man makes the world burn'). Cunctae res difficiles, non potest eas homo explicare sermone 'Now all difficult things, humanity can't explain them with speech' (4th c., Vulgate, Ecclesiastes 1:8). The Trésor de la langue française says French on descends from this latter use. I'd say these vague 'a person, a human' ~ 'a man' ~ 'any person, humanity' uses have never been fully abandoned in Spanish/French at least.

On can be used to replace just about any person + number combination in French, but some replacements are more common and less limited than others. The Trésor gives some very old attestations for all of them, including one from circa 1445 that is clearly used for nous 'we, us', from the Recueil général des sotties: On ne debvons pas grand amende 'We don't owe a great (money) fine' (although nowadays it doesn't take 1PL verbal forms of course). I found that Bescherelle Sr., Bescherelle Jr. and de Gaux's Grammaire Nationale (1836) explicitly accepts these uses as early as that date (see section No. IV in page 164). In the next page they give the example On a l'amour de la patrie, comme vous voyez 'We have love for our country, as you guys can see'.

[Pabappa]

Pirahã is believed to have borrowed its pronouns from a nearby language, indicating that it may have once lacked pronouns entirely. I dont know enough about Pirahã to know whether it has person marking on verbs, but I do remember reading that the pronouns borrowed included 3rd person and that Pirahã even today uses abbreviated forms of nouns where we would use 3rd person pronouns ... e.g. as if English speakers used construcitons like "i saw the panther behind the rock. pan had sharp teeth" where pan indicates the panther.

I believed for a long time that Inuktitut was entirely without pronouns, and based a family of conlangs on what I thought they were doing, and it works .... in fact one language got rid of its person markers too, and just has "self / nonself" plus evidentials.

if this is for a conlang, i could use my conlang as a way to show how to do this idea ... if not, i know a similar question came up before so I might motivate myself to put something online anyway.

[KathTheDragon]

Pirahã is believed to have borrowed its pronouns from a nearby language, indicating that it may have once lacked pronouns entirely.

I'm not sure that conclusion really follows.

[Travis B.]

Just because English borrowed its 3pl pronoun forms from Old Norse does not mean that English did not previously have 3pl pronouns...

[Emily]

iirc luiseño doesn't have 3rd person pronouns

[Richard W]

Just because English borrowed its 3pl pronoun forms from Old Norse does not mean that English did not previously have 3pl pronouns...

Not all of 'em.

[Travis B.]

iirc luiseño doesn't have 3rd person pronouns

Mind you in many languages demonstratives take the place of 3rd person pronouns.

[Kuchigakatai]

iirc luiseño doesn't have 3rd person pronouns

Nor Latin nor Classical Chinese, which get away with it the way travisb just said.

[Richard W]

iirc luiseño doesn't have 3rd person pronouns

Mind you in many languages demonstratives take the place of 3rd person pronouns.

The inherited Middle English demonstrative plurals couldn't do there own jobs - those comes from the word that meant 'these'. No wonder English hired the slightly exotic they.

[KathTheDragon]

The inherited Middle English demonstrative plurals couldn't do there own jobs - those comes from the word that meant 'these'. No wonder English hired the slightly exotic they.

What is this even supposed to mean?

[Kuchigakatai]

The inherited Middle English demonstrative plurals couldn't do there own jobs - those comes from the word that meant 'these'. No wonder English hired the slightly exotic they.

What is this even supposed to mean?

The original plural of proximal 'this' (OE masc. þes, fem. þēos, neut. þis) was 'those' (þās). The original plural of distal 'that' (OE neut. þæt) was ME þo (OE þā). The plurals þos > 'those' and þo were confused in early Middle English, so that 'those', the proximal plural, ended up as the plural of distal 'that'. Meanwhile, the proximal 'this' (ME þes/þis, also with an added -e) became used as both singular and plural, until vowel length was used to distinguish singular and plural in the proximal, with a short vowel with /s/ in 'this' and an exaggerated long one with /z/ in 'these'.

While all this happened, the OE distal determiner (masc./neut. dat. þǣm, fem. acc. þā, nom./acc. pl. þā...), aside from neuter singular þæt, was phonologically reduced as it became the definite article 'the'.

[KathTheDragon]

Oh, that's interesting