To: cowan@ccil.org
Subject: Re: GFP-FAQ 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Tue, 05 Sep 1995 18:53:52 EDT."
             <199509052253.SAA14064@ritz.mordor.com> 
Date: Tue, 05 Sep 1995 19:20:06 -0400
From: John David Chao <chao@louie.udel.edu>
Message-ID:  <9509052320.aa28714@stimpy.eecis.udel.edu>
Status: OR

          
Thanks for the feedback and German clarification.

cowan@ccil.org says:
| (Minor note:  "sie" is both "she" and "they" and indeed "you (polite)"
...
| part.  For example, "him" is pronounced [him] in a stressed position like
| "I saw him, not her"; but it is pronounced [im] in unstressed positions
| like "I wanted him to go with me" [aiwantitimtugowiTmi].

Case one seems like an establishment phase, focussing on the individual
specifically, and case two seems to be more like referring to an already-
established specific individual**, where no real emphasis is needed, and no
confusion as to the nature of "him" is expected by the speaker. So...
(footnote: **ignoring "if anyone calls, tell them..." types of use)

| collides firmly with your 3sg pronoun "em", so that "I saw em" becomes
| ambiguous, in spoken English, between "I saw em" and "I saw them".
| 
| This objection, it seems to me, is at least as strong as the similar
| objection to "hir".

...this doesn't seem to be a problem to me. "I saw [unstressed them]"
is referring to something the listener is already expected to know to
be plural. The words preceding (sp?) the sentence would indicate the 
plural. But in "I saw hir take the peach", previous words may not have
established the sex of hir, or the use of GFPs may not have been expected,
so confusion would be expected as people plugged in "her". 

And even if people did know that it was hir and not her, they might still
be uncomfortable and/or mocking when a hir was applied to someone known
to be male. (I'm assuming an audience hostile to GFPs here, looking for
things to pick at.)

Also, the problem already exists with [im] and [em], both of which i
say just about identically. It never causes confusion. Of course, it is
possible to say [ir] and [er] in a way that's fairly easy to pick up,
but i don't think all speakers would do this.

Comments? 

John Chao
chao@ee.udel.edu