Longer words for pronouns.

[Space60]

Pronouns tend to be short little words "he", "she", "I", "me", "they", "you".

What longer words for pronouns do languages have?

The English second person plurals "you all", "you guys", "you 'uns" and "you lot" are a bit long.

[Kuchigakatai]

In the 16th century, Cervantes showed no objection against using vuessa merced as a polite 2SG pronoun in Spanish (and vuessas mercedes for 2PL). Later on this pronoun evolved into modern usted (and ustedes).

Japanese famously has a large set of pronouns, including watakushi '1SG (very formal)', also four syllables long.

[Richard W]

Trisyllabic forms are quite common, often alternating with shorter forms, e.g. for 'I' we have Latin emphatic egomet contrasting with ego, Hebrew anoki contrating with ani, Thai khaphacao contrasting with phom/chan/ku.

[zompist]

Quechua's plural pronouns are all 3 syllables, e.g. ñoqanchik 'we (incl.)'; these give 4-syllable case forms like acc. ñoqanchikta.

Spanish and Portuguese used to have a wide range of honorifics that acted like (and arguably were) pronouns, like vuestra excellencia. You can still get forms like os senhores in Portuguese (2p polite).

[Vijay]

There are only three pronouns in Malayalam I can think of that are monosyllabic, and even then only in nominative case. Most have two syllables in nominative case, but a few have three, and then when you add on case endings and especially postpositions on top of that, they can get fairly long, e.g. അദ്ദേഹത്തിനുവേണ്ടി [əd̪ˈd̪eːhət̪ɪnɯʋeːɳɖi] 'for him/her (formal)'.

[Frislander]

Chitose Ainu has a third singular pronoun sinuma, which is actually shorter than the equivalent plural okay. On the flipside the 2nd person pronouns are eani and ecioká for singular and plural respectively.

But I think the prize has to go to Enindhilyangkwa

[Salmoneus]

English of course has the pronoun your excellency, sometimes abbreviated simply to excellency.


EDIT: and in a specific register it has the wonderful pronoun my right honourable and learned friend. This is a combined 2nd ("I will get back to my right honourable and learned friend with that information") and 3rd ("as the honourable lady said in her reply to my right honourable and learned friend...") pronoun, used specifically when:
a) the speaker is an elected member of parliament
b) the referent is also an elected member of parliament
c) the referent is also a member of the Privy Council
d) the referent is also a practicing member of the legal profession
e) both speaker and referent belong to the same politicial party
and
f) both speaker and referent are present in one specific room in one building in London, and only during designated ritual periods (called 'debates')

Rule e) is weakening slightly in modern times - the term may also be used in an honorary capacity for members of other parties when a friendly attitude is intended to be shown. And rule f) can be bent, and the pronoun used in other situations, either out of habit or ironicaly. But that's the general pattern.

Use of this pronoun when the correct social context obtains is mandatory, and failure to use it is likely to result in immediate public confrontation.

[Linguoboy]

I can’t think of any core Korean pronoun with more than three, e.g. 너희들 /nehuytul/ “you (pl.)”. This breaks down to 2s 너 plus two collective suffixes: 희, which is specific to pronouns, and general-purpose 들. I’ve never really understood why it’s common to use both.

[So Haleza Grise]

Something to consider here is "normal" word length. Some Australian languages have constraints against words that are too short - e.g. monosyllables may be outright forbidden. In the case of the Enindhilyangkwa example: I believe the pronouns are not *abnormally* long considering the length of the average word. Also consider that these are free pronouns. IIRC the bound forms are shorter (though maybe not by much)

[missals]

English of course has the pronoun your excellency, sometimes abbreviated simply to excellency.


EDIT: and in a specific register it has the wonderful pronoun my right honourable and learned friend. This is a combined 2nd ("I will get back to my right honourable and learned friend with that information") and 3rd ("as the honourable lady said in her reply to my right honourable and learned friend...") pronoun, used specifically when:
a) the speaker is an elected member of parliament
b) the referent is also an elected member of parliament
c) the referent is also a member of the Privy Council
d) the referent is also a practicing member of the legal profession
e) both speaker and referent belong to the same politicial party
and
f) both speaker and referent are present in one specific room in one building in London, and only during designated ritual periods (called 'debates')

Rule e) is weakening slightly in modern times - the term may also be used in an honorary capacity for members of other parties when a friendly attitude is intended to be shown. And rule f) can be bent, and the pronoun used in other situations, either out of habit or ironicaly. But that's the general pattern.

Use of this pronoun when the correct social context obtains is mandatory, and failure to use it is likely to result in immediate public confrontation.

Fully keeping in mind that second-person pronouns frequently develop from terms of address, and that the boundaries between categories can be fuzzy, I still need to point out that neither of these are pronouns. "Term of address" isn't synonymous with "second-person pronoun"; if it were, probably most languages would have literally hundreds of second-person pronouns.

One key test for pronounhood is repeatability. A pronoun can be repeated (ignoring differences in case-forms) multiple times with the same referent in the same sentence without being stilted or ungrammatical. E.g. we can say "Would you like to go to your office to get the papers John gave you?"

Or, for example, the difference between you guys and y'all. In varieties that use it, you guys still isn't fully grammaticalized as a pronoun - you can't say "Would you guys like to go to you guys' office to get the papers John gave you guys?" - it has to be "Would you guys like to go to your office to get the papers John gave you?"

But y'all is a pronoun in most varieties that have it. You can say, perfectly naturally, "Y'all wanna go to y'all's office to get the papers John gave y'all?"

I would be very surprised if you could say "Would my right honourable and learned friend like to go to my right honourable and learned friend's office to get the papers that John gave my right honourable and learned friend?" - I assume you'd have to say "Would my right honourable and learned friend like to go to his/her office to get the papers that John gave him/her?" Likewise with (your) excellency.

[zompist]

One key test for pronounhood is repeatability. A pronoun can be repeated (ignoring differences in case-forms) multiple times with the same referent in the same sentence without being stilted or ungrammatical. E.g. we can say "Would you like to go to your office to get the papers John gave you?"

Or, for example, the difference between you guys and y'all. In varieties that use it, you guys still isn't fully grammaticalized as a pronoun - you can't say "Would you guys like to go to you guys' office to get the papers John gave you guys?" - it has to be "Would you guys like to go to your office to get the papers John gave you?"

I get what you're saying, but I'm not sure this is really a rule. It doesn't take reflexives into account (cf. "Wash yourself and let Daddy take a picture of you."), but we can put those aside for now.

But take this French sentence, from Goscinny: Quand on s'est rassis.. à notre banc, on s'est dit que la maitresse était vraiment chouette, et qu'elle nous aimait bien[...]." On is used here equivalently to nous (the 1p pronoun)... but it can only be used in subject position, it doesn't have object or dative or possessive forms. (Yet nous does occur in subject position, sometimes in sentences where on is also used as a 1p.)

Or in Portuguese, the ordinary 2s pronoun is você, but it doesn't have a possessive-- you use the 3rd person possessive forms: Que você saiba, seu filho gosta do rock? ("To your knowledge, does your son like rock?") So it seems normal enough for a pronoun to have a defective paradigm.

It's a little long to type, but I also have here an interesting sentence in 19th century Portuguese, which repeats Vossa Mercê three times in one sentence... but also slips in one dative lhe.

[Salmoneus]

In the case of "his excellency" and so on, I don't think it's very interesting to say that long pronouns stop being pronouns if it is stylistically preferred to use synonyms rather than repeat them. This is a common stylistic rule for all parts of speech, and it seems weird to say that it constitutes a fundamental division of the pronoun class, though is unimportant for all other classes. Particularly since repetition of long pronouns in a sentence is not ungrammatical, but merely stylistically dispreferred.

Given that they are pronouns in the more usual sense of the word - in that they are indexicals that take the place of a noun - it doesn't seem interesting to create an additional "not a pronoun, honestly!" class simply in order to say that they are both a) long and b) equipped with synonyms.

[Yiuel Raumbesrairc]

In the case of "his excellency" and so on, I don't think it's very interesting to say that long pronouns stop being pronouns if it is stylistically preferred to use synonyms rather than repeat them. This is a common stylistic rule for all parts of speech, and it seems weird to say that it constitutes a fundamental division of the pronoun class, though is unimportant for all other classes. Particularly since repetition of long pronouns in a sentence is not ungrammatical, but merely stylistically dispreferred.

Given that they are pronouns in the more usual sense of the word - in that they are indexicals that take the place of a noun - it doesn't seem interesting to create an additional "not a pronoun, honestly!" class simply in order to say that they are both a) long and b) equipped with synonyms.

Anyway, their French equivalents can and should be repeated.

[Yalensky]

I have to ask: what is the definition of a pronoun then, if we are accepting such long and--in some cases--seemingly ad hoc honorific phrases? If pronouns are not a closed class as this thread shows, and if repeatability is not a criterion, then is there some other way of determining the difference between a pronoun and any other NP?

For example, it would seem absurd to me to call "that guy over there in the blue shirt" a 3rd person informal distal masculine blue-shirted pronoun, and yet I can fit it into Missals' example sentence all the same, with the same stylistic deficiency and grammatical acceptability:

"Would that guy over there in the blue shirt like to go to that guy over there in the blue shirt's office to get the papers John gave that guy over there in the blue shirt?"

Is it simply that "that guy over there in the blue shirt" is not yet a set phrase like "your excellency"?

[Salmoneus]

I have to ask: what is the definition of a pronoun then, if we are accepting such long and--in some cases--seemingly ad hoc honorific phrases? If pronouns are not a closed class as this thread shows, and if repeatability is not a criterion, then is there some other way of determining the difference between a pronoun and any other NP?

For example, it would seem absurd to me to call "that guy over there in the blue shirt" a 3rd person informal distal masculine blue-shirted pronoun, and yet I can fit it into Missals' example sentence all the same, with the same stylistic deficiency and grammatical acceptability:

"Would that guy over there in the blue shirt like to go to that guy over there in the blue shirt's office to get the papers John gave that guy over there in the blue shirt?"

Is it simply that "that guy over there in the blue shirt" is not yet a set phrase like "your excellency"?

Well, I don't see a 'pro-' in this case.

If I say "That guy in a blue shirt wants some coffee", you can deduce the meaning of this from the meaning of the words. Guy, blue, shirt, in, that, all being used in their normal sense. This is just a noun phrase.

If I say "His excellency would like cup of coffee", you cannot deduce the meaning from the individual words - they're semantically, and indeed grammatically misleading. It's not the abstract fact of his being excellent that wants coffee, it's the ambassador. And indeed, "his" doesn't normally work like that, as no "he" has previously been established. I can come up to you and say "his excellency would like some coffee", and you can understand me, but if I walk up to you out of the blue and say "his mother would like some coffee", sans ostension, then you need to know who 'he' is first.

So a phrase like "his excellency" isn't just a noun with a possessive attached; it's a lexical unit in its own right. And it's a lexical unit that's only ever used pronominally. You can't, for example, say "there were seven his excellencies in the room" (or even "there were seven excellencies in the room", unless by jocular wordplay).

Also, "his excellency" is indexed to the speaker and listener. I can say "Hey, guy in the blue shirt!", but I can't say, "Hey, his excellency!" - I have to say "Hey, your excellency!" - the pronoun changes depending on whether it's second or third person, but the noun doesn't. Similarly, I can, in theory, say "he gave it to me, the guy in the blue shirt", but I can't say "he gave it to me, my excellency" - there's no first-person equivalent of this pronoun.

[akam chinjir]

Besides honourifics there are also pronoun-y uses of pejorative terms: "I asked Charlieᵢ but the jerkᵢ wouldn't help out." A test: if you replaced "jerk" with a non-pronoun-y noun like "doctor," it couldn't corefer with "Charlie." (A pronoun but not a referring expression can be bound.) I don't think such pronoun-y pejoratives are paradigmatically deficient, but they probably don't stand much repetition. I expect they can get quite long.

Can "my right honourable and learned friend" be used in a similar way?

[anxi]

Besides honourifics there are also pronoun-y uses of pejorative terms: "I asked Charlieᵢ but the jerkᵢ wouldn't help out." A test: if you replaced "jerk" with a non-pronoun-y noun like "doctor," it couldn't corefer with "Charlie." (A pronoun but not a referring expression can be bound.) I don't think such pronoun-y pejoratives are paradigmatically deficient, but they probably don't stand much repetition. I expect they can get quite long.

How would “I asked Charlie but the guy wouldn't help out” behave in that situation, from the perspective of a native English speaker?

[Neon Fox]

I'd call that non-standard but barely acceptable, perhaps because 'guy' is juuust not-specific enough? 'Doctor' would not do at all.

"I asked Charlie and the angel said yes right away!" works, but again 'doctor' doesn't.

Actually, looking at that, I think whether the word works depends mostly on whether it provides useful information in the context of the sentence. 'Jerk', 'guy', and 'angel' add descriptors of Charlie that's relevant to hir answer (though 'guy' is pretty iffy); 'doctor' or similar do not.

[Salmoneus]

"Guy" works fine for me there, and doesn't add any relevant meaning. Likewise, "man" fits there but isn't only used when gender is relevant.

"Angel" doesn't work for me, but then the use of "angel" as an endearment is alien to me - so it reads as a substantive noun, which is prohibited there. But other positive-attitudinal terms work - "I asked her to move, but the old dear didn't seem to hear me".


I think for me this works with attitudinal terms, and with bare classificatory terms (man, woman, guy, etc). You sometimes see it with pets, as well - "he shooed Rex away, but the dog wouldn't budge".

EDIT: it works for things like "his excellency". It's not testable with parliamentary terms, because it's not permitted to use names in situations where parliamentary terms are employed. Although thinking about it, I suppose it does work, with other permitted descriptors: "I have repeatedly asked the Prime Minister for a response, but my right honourable friend has not yet replied".

[Neon Fox]

Sal, I think you have the right of it, thank you.