Sunday, 13 April 2008

pne: A picture of a plush toy, halfway between a duck and a platypus, with a green body and a yellow bill and feet. (Default)

Interestingly enough, while Amy distinguishes he from him, she uses she indiscriminately for subject and object use (though whether she'll use the masculine, feminine, or neuter pronoun is mostly random; masculine is the most common).

Presumably, the use of objective she (example from today: "I want to catch she!") is related to the fact that that's how it is in German: the masculine pronoun has different forms for nominative and accusative (er, ihn) while the feminine is the same in both cases (sie).

Yet she distinguishes "gloves" from "mittens" fairly reliably, even though they're typically the same in German ("Handschuhe", i.e. "hand-shoes", though one can make a distinction as "Fingerhandschuhe" and "Fäustlinge"). So making more distinctions in English than in German is not unknown for her, and she does make a subjective/objective case distinction for he/him... Interesting.

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pne: A picture of a plush toy, halfway between a duck and a platypus, with a green body and a yellow bill and feet. (Default)
Philip Newton

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