this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2023
778 points (95.7% liked)
People Twitter
5189 readers
1935 users here now
People tweeting stuff. We allow tweets from anyone.
RULES:
- Mark NSFW content.
- No doxxing people.
- Must be a tweet or similar
- No bullying or international politcs
- Be excellent to each other.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
You can have an alternate third person pronoun I suppose in order to distinguish two third person individuals, but that doesn't mean there's a fourth person pronoun. The general definition is:
So things like "chat" and "breaking the fourth wall" are second person pronouns. There is no fourth person pronoun, because anything other than first and second is covered under third person.
I've looked it up and the official name is "obviative" and it is sometimes referred to as the "fourth person".
That still sounds like a special type of third person, though I guess that's just disagreeing about terminology.
I see why you would analyze it that way but I also see that it deserves a term in its own rights. As you said, it's all terminology. There are no objective definitions, at least not in linguistics
Isn't 'chat' essentially treated as a name, except that it refers to a group of people instead of an individual?
I think you're right, and the pronoun for it would be the second person plural (you in English).
Yes that makes sense