Pronouns in Euraisa and elsewhere

[Nigel Vincent]

Nick's Latin example reminds me of a paper about the other end of the body
co-authored by my colleague Andrew Koontz-Garboden, viz:
Beavers, John & Andrew Koontz-Garboden. A universal pronoun in English?.
Linguistic Inquiry 37 (2006): 503-513, which analyses the expression
'his/your/etc ass' and makes a convincing case for it having the distribution
of a pronoun in the appropriate dialects.
One might also mention the use of various body parts in idioms involving the
fake reflexive construction. Thus, alongside 'he talked himself out of 
the job'
or 'he worked himself to a standstill' you get things like 'she laughed her
head off', 'she sang her heart out', 'they worked their fingers to the bone'
etc.

And on etymology, isn't English 'she' supposed to be a borrowing?

Nigel


>>
>> My second question concerns pronouns in a global context; Are there 
>> any languages attested whose personal pronouns are derived from 
>> lexemes such as body or any other possible body part and if yes, are 
>> these pronouns considered to be etymologically old or are they more 
>> recent grammaticalizations? Any reference welcome...
> Would you accept 'somebody', 'anybody' and (in Scots):
> "When a body meets a body, comin' through the rye..." (Robert Burns) ?
>
> I am also tempted to quote Sophocles' Antigone
> o: koinon autadelphon Isme:ne:s kara
> O common self-fraternal, of Ismene, head
> i.e. O you, Ismene, my own sister....
> and the sentence goes on with a 2nd person "ar' oistha..." - "do you 
> know...?"
>
> And in Latin (Livy)
> habet poenam noxium caput
> 'the guilty head has been punished' i.e. the guilty one has been punished
>
> -- 
> Nicholas Ostler
>
> Chairman, Foundation for Endangered Languages
> Registered Charity: England and Wales 1070616
> 172 Bailbrook Lane, Bath, BA1 7AA, England
> nostler at chibcha.demon.co.uk
> http://www.ogmios.org
>



-- 
Professor Nigel Vincent, FBA
Associate Vice-President for Graduate Education


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