This is Iago, who is from Seville, and his friend, Briel, from Catalonia. Instead of always referring to himself as Iago, he says yo ‘I’ (1st person, singular). If he and Briel are doing something together he says nosotros ‘we’ (1st person, plural). If Iago is speaking to Briel, he’ll say tú ‘you’ (2nd person, singular). If he’s speaking to Briel’s father, he’ll probably be more polite and say usted ‘you’ (also 2nd person, singular). If Briel’s father is addressing both Iago and Briel, he’ll say vosotros ‘you (2nd person plural)’. If he’s talking about Briel, he’ll say él ‘he’ (3rd persom, singular). If is talkig about Iago and Briel, he’ll say ellos ‘they’ (3rd person, pluarl).
Who and how many?
Most mIE languages are happy with singular and plural pronouns. For example
Hindi
vah3sg ṭahalne gayā3sg. [he take+walk went] ‘He went on a walk.’
ve3pl ṭahalne gae3pl. [they take+walk went] ‘They went on a walk.’
In addition to indicating number in the subject pronouns, Hindi (as with most other languages) duplicates number information in the verb, a good example of agreement. Slovenian and the Sorbians (Upper and Lower), all spoken in Central Europe, are proud to have a third number: dual. (Dual was once common in earlier forms of the mIE languages but has been lost in most languages, though remnants still can be found in dialects and a few fixed phrases.)
Slovenian
Šli3pl so3pl na sprehod. [went are on walk] ‘They went on a walk.’ (the pronoun has been dropped–the number is indicated by the verb)
Šla3du sta3du na sprehod. [went are on walk] ‘They two went on a walk.’ (the pronoun has been dropped–the number is indicated by the verb)
Sorbian
Woni3pl su3pl na prochadźku šlipl. [they are on walk went]
Wonej3du stej3du na prochadźku šlejdu. [they are on walk went] ‘They two went on a walk.’
French first person plural nous ‘we’ has nearly been eclipsed in subject position in speech by the indefinite pronoun on ‘someone’ or ‘one’. It can be used for pretty much any person, though ‘we’ is where it most often resides. Napoleon had recourse to on during the battle of Waterloo. When one of his favorite generals was late carrying out a maneuver, Napoleon exclaimed ‘On a perdu la France!” (You/we, have lost France!) 1 The nice thing about French on is that it can spread responsibility around. Other languages have similar strategies, but French is unique in the breadth of its usage of this impersonal pronoun.
French
On3sg est allé se promener. [one is gone to+walk] ‘we/he/she/they have gone for a walk.’ (Context clarifies which meaning is intended.)
We: ‘me and you’ or ‘me and someone else’.
Out of context we don’t know who ‘we’ is in ‘We went for a walk.’, It could be ‘you and I’ or it could be ‘me and Theodora.’ Ithout context it’s ambiguous in English. The Indo-Aryan languages, however, make this distinction clear with two different 1st plural pronouns, one for inclusive ‘we’ and one for exclusive ‘we’.
Sindhi
asā̃1pl sīr ti vayāsū̃1plincl [we walk on went] ‘We (you and I) went for a walk.’
asīn1pl sīr ti vayāsīn1plexcl [we walk on went] ‘We (you weren’t there) went for a walk.’
“So to be honest, although it is true that dual is alive, it is frequently replaced by plural in everyday speech. It is precisely because of this [that] “dvojina” (dual) is one of the hottest linguistic topics here in Slovenia. Many people are sensitive about it, because they perceive it as the most special feature of Slovenian language. Preserving dual is something many Slovenians feel really strongly about.”2
- https://warhistory.org/@msw/article/18-june-1815-what-if-part-ii ↩︎
- https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/slovene-dual-verbal-forms.3160764/ ↩︎
Grammar Terms
Agreement A means for associating in a phrase a word less grammatically marked with a different word more grammatically marked. The verb think can take several forms but to associate it closely to a 3rd singular subject it adds the verbal ending -s: She thinks. Agreement can take different forms in different languages.
Dual is the grammatical term for two objects. In some languages (e.g., Russian) dual endings have spread to three and four objects.
Number Singular, plural or dual. In English plural ‘they’ is sometimes used for an unknown singular object: Someone crashed into my mailbox but they left a note.
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