steele@unc.cs.unc.edu (Oliver Steele) (01/01/70)
[ Note that I am adding sci.lang to the newsgroup heading and redirecting followups there; please do the same if you reply to a different article in this thread. ] mkhaw@teknowledge-vaxc.ARPA (Mike Khaw) writes: >One could also use the well-established third-person singular neuter pronoun >that begins this sentence. When using "one", one's sentences read differently >from sentences that use "he" or "she", and one runs the risk of sounding arch, >but one is clearly not being sexist. 'One' is an arch substitute for colloquial 'you', and acts as a general pronoun that doesn't require an antecedent instead of a definite pronoun that does. Overloading it with meanings this similar would probably be unacceptably ambiguous: "That's a nice baby, isn't one." "One of the receptionists finally got around to receiving me, and one told me that Mr. Bigglesworth would be back from lunch shortly." (The two 'one's are co-referential). I tend to use foo, since it's easy to pronounce and one (:-) doesn't ever need to run computer descriptions and people-talk so closely together that 'one's uses as third person pronoun and metasyntactic variable conflict. Also: who where when whither whence wherefore thoo there then thither thence therefore who here hither hence wherefore (the top 'who' and 'wherefore' are interogative; the bottom ones are relative -- kludge) It is impossible to get a new word introduced into English with hard th ('then') instead of soft 'th' ('thistle'), and 'foo' comes close to 'thoo' with a soft 'th'. sterritt@ge-mc3i.UUCP (Chris Sterritt) writes: >NO NO A MILLION TIMES NO!!!!! Linguists DO NOT DICTATE LANGUAGE!!!! NO ONE >HAS EVER EVER EVER SUGGESTED SUCH A "FIX" FOR ANY HUMAN LANGUAGE AND HAD IT >STICK (except in France). (I'm glad letters only have two cases!) Exactly. The way to get a word introduced is to use it, not to prescribe it. I've only been able to get this to work for small groups of people (under 100). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Oliver Steele ...!{decvax,ihnp4}!mcnc!unc!steele steele%unc@mcnc.org