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From: hsbrand@cs.vu.nl (HS Brandsma)
Subject: Re: "they" know everything
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Followup-To: sci.lang,swnet.svenska
References: <4aoutf$8a4_001@leeds.ac.uk> <4b1lkn$qtm@gordon.enea.se>
Sender: news@cs.vu.nl
Organization: Fac. Wiskunde & Informatica, VU, Amsterdam
Date: Mon, 18 Dec 1995 11:13:21 GMT
Message-ID: <DJs4IA.n23.0.-s@cs.vu.nl>
Lines: 48

Erland Sommarskog (sommar@enea.se) wrote:
: FLL4DAV@leeds.ac.uk (D.A. Voss) wrote:
: >In English we seem able to talk of current scientific opinion by using 
: >"they", without any prior reference to any particular group of scientists, 
: >e.g. "Well, they think that oil will run out in X years".  How can this 
: >use be classified grammatically, and does anything like it come up in 
: >other languages?  Just wondering...

: The primary choices in Swedish would be:

:    Man tror att oljan kommer att ta slut om X r.  (One think that...)
:    Det sgs att oljan kommer att ta slut om X r.  (It is said that...)

: The appliance of the impersonal "man" is wider in Swedish than
: "one" in English which doesn't really fit here.

: However, there are places where the 3rd person plural is used
: as well in Swedish, and seem to indicate that the speaker is
: distancing himself from those who are committing the act:

:    De har beslutat om en ny skatt.     They have decided on a new tax.
:    Man har beslutat om en ny skatt.    One has decided on a new tax.

: In this example one could envision that a speaker who use the
: first construction does not like the new tax, whereas the second
: construction is more embracing.

: Then again, it could be only me who is imagining things, and
: this impersonal use of "de" is due to English influence.


:    



: --
: Erland Sommarskog, sommar@algonet.se, Stockholm
: Note new address. I'm leaving ENEA by the end of the year,
: and my account here will not be functional any more. The
: new address is with an ISP and is up and running.

The situation in Frisian is similar to the one in Swedish:
"men" (pronounced with a schwa) always includes the speaker.
"se" always excludes the speaker."Se" is also the third person
plural pronoun.(Men is often even used as one would use "ik"(I)).

Henno

