If you had a design a pronoun system for English from scratch, what
would it look like?
For illustrations of the technical terms dual, trial,
inclusive, and exclusive, see the pronoun paradigm
of Tok
Pisin, an English-based creole spoken on Papua New Guinea.
- Would you have a number distinction in the second person?
- Here and for the following items, what would the forms be?
- Would you have a formality distinction in the second person (as in
Spanish tu vs. usted)? How about even in other
persons?
- Would you have a gender distinction in the third person singular?
In the third person plural?
- Would you have a distinction in the first person plural
between inclusive (speaker and addressee(s) and possibly others)
vs. exclusive (speaker and others, but not addressee(s))?
- Would you have a dual? A trial?
- Would you have a case distinction between subject and object case
(for example, they vs. them)?
- More generally, would your pronoun paradigm be more regular than the
existing one? Consider both ordinary and possessive pronouns (for
example, they, them vs. their).