Generalizing personal pronoun

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A generalizing personal pronoun (short: general pronoun ) differs from other personal pronouns in that it does not refer to a specific referent , but to a general or any referent.

Classification within the personal pronouns

A general pronoun is representative of a speaker who cannot be clearly assigned to the person category (even if it is grammatically assigned a personal form). In the German language, the pronoun man is a generalizing personal pronoun for a statement whose subject does not mean a specific referent: 

Man gönnt sich ja sonst nichts.

Although grammatically a 3rd person singular is present, statements with "man" can be continued with reference to a 1st, 2nd or 3rd person: 

Man gönnt sich ja sonst nichts, also leiste ich es mir. (1. Person Singular)
Man gönnt sich ja sonst nichts, also warum leistet ihr es euch nicht? (2. Person Plural)
Man gönnt sich ja sonst nichts, also leisten Sie es sich doch! (2. Person, höflich)
Man gönnt sich ja sonst auch was, also hat er/sie es sich geleistet. (3. Person Singular)

Delimitation of indefinite pronouns

In contrast to indefinite pronouns , a general pronoun such as German can repeatedly refer to the same referent within a text, while indefinite pronouns cannot do this: 

Da sieht manA, was manB davon hat. (Referent A ist identisch mit Referent B)
Da sieht jemandA, was jemandB davon hat. (Referent A ist nicht identisch mit Referent B)

German one and one

The generally established general pronoun in the German language is one ; it connects as a subject with verb forms of the 3rd person singular. As dative and accusative of one the corresponding masculine forms of the pronoun act one : 

Nichts wird einem gegönnt.

This pronoun one can be distinguished from an indefinite in spite of its identical form with the indefinite article, precisely because it serves to resume the same referent. Compare: 

Wenn manA eine Frau beleidigt, dann ohrfeigt sie einenA.
Wenn manA eine Frau beleidigt, dann ohrfeigt sie jemandenB. ( = jemand anderen)

German woman and man

The feminist critique of language has as an alternative to pronoun to the following reasons the pronoun woman and human created:
the first one is considered grammatically masculine and would therefore inevitably associated more with boys as female speakers, so be not at all gender neutral.
2. it is because of the homophony with the noun man unsuited to the reference to persons of any gender.

English general pronouns

one was used in Old and Middle English just like in German (in the Me. next to it the allomorphic forms men and me ), but fell out of use in the course of the 15th century. In its place are in modern English the pronoun one or generalized uses of the personal pronoun you (more rarely they , we ) 

That’s a miracle, one may think. „Das ist ein Wunder, möchte man meinen.“ (wörtlich übersetzt: „...möchte einer meinen.“)
That's a miracle, you may think. „Das ist ein Wunder, möchte man meinen.“ (wörtlich übersetzt: „...möchtest du/möchtet ihr meinen.“)
They say that love is a gentle thing, but it's only brought me pain. (wörtlich übersetzt: „Sie sagen, die Liebe sei zärtlich, aber...“)

French on and Catalan hom

The pronoun on (derived from lat . Homo , "man") joins as German one with verb forms of the third person singular. However, it is not only used as a general pronoun with a general reference, but also competes with the personal pronoun nous for reference to the 1st person plural: 

Pour ne pas vivre seul on vit avec un chien, on vie avec des roses, ou avec une croix. „Um nicht allein zu sein, legt man sich einen Hund zu, oder Rosen, oder ein Kreuz.“
Qu’est-ce qu’on fait? „Was machen wir?“

The same applies to the Catalan hom (also from Latin homo ): 

Antigament hom creia que el Sol girava al voltant de la Terra. „Früher glaubte man, dass sich die Sonne um die Erde dreht.“

General pronouns in other languages

Many languages ​​do not have a special form general pronoun. For example, Italian, Romanian, Czech, and Russian use either reflexive verb phrases with a null subject or 3rd person plural verb phrases instead: 

Italienisch: Non si può fare. „Das darf man nicht.“
Tschechisch: To se nedělá. „Das tut man nicht.“

Rumänisch: Mă cheamă Ramona. „Man nennt mich Ramona.“
Russisch: Menjá zovút Olég. „Man nennt mich Olég.“

In Irish there is a verb form, the so-called "autonomous form" , which, as a personal conjugation form of the verb, conveys the same meaning as an independent general pronoun otherwise (there is no separate pronoun for it in this language).

See also

Wiktionary: generalizing  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations
Wiktionary: Personal pronouns  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

literature

  • Haspelmath, Martin . 1997. Indefinite pronouns . Oxford: Clarendon Press.
  • Snježana Kordić : The generalizing "čovjek" 'man' in Croatian-Serbian . In: Bernhard Symanzik, Gerhard Birkfellner, Alfred Sproede (eds.): Woman and man in language, literature and culture in the Slavic and Baltic region (=  writings on cultural studies ). tape 45 . Publishing house Dr. Kovač , Hamburg 2002, ISBN 3-8300-0641-1 , p. 165–187 ( Online [PDF; 1.8 MB ; accessed on April 20, 2019]).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Grammis, "Generalizing Personalpronomen". Retrieved July 3, 2020.
  2. ^ F. Th. Visser: An Historical Syntax of the English Language. Part One: Syntactical Units with One Verb . 2nd, reviewed edition. Brill, Leiden 1970, pp. 51–52, § 65 ( man as subject )
  3. ↑ Linda Ronstadt : I Never Will Marry , in: The Johnny Cash Show , June 21, 1969.
  4. ↑ on, pron. pers. indéf. , in: Le Trésor de la Langue Française Informatisé , accessed 10 December 2015.
  5. ↑ Dalida : Pour ne pas vivre seul , in: Il faut du temps , Sonopresse, 1972.
  6. ↑ hom , in: Gran Diccionari de la llengua catalana (online), accessed December 10, 2015.