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Re: Silvish scratchpad

On Pronouns and Gender (Part 3)

I forgot about two pronouns. There's the demonstrative sou and the impersonal pronoun on.

Sou is pretty straightforward. It's used mostly when the referent is genderless, e.g. a verb or a clause; when the gender of a non-human referent is unknown or irrelevant; or when a clause needs a dummy subject. Agreement targets governed by sou always appear in their masculine common form.


I'm less sure what to do about on because its etymology and its usage seem to point toward different kinds of agreement. On the etymology front, on comes from the Latin nominative homō "man". The noble gender has a connection to the Latin nominative, and homō also survives in Silvish as the noble-gender noun où "man". Considering these two facts, it looks reasonable to have on trigger noble agreement.

On the usage side, I haven't worked out all the details, but at least sometimes on is used as an impersonal pronoun corresponding to English "one" and generic "you". That's low saliency, and I have cited that trait before to make some human nouns common gender. In that case, common-gender agreement makes sense.

But that's not all because on is sometimes used as a first-person plural pronoun. If on is to pattern with first-person pronouns, it should take noble agreement.

So there are arguments in both directions. What do you think? Should on trigger common agreement? Noble agreement? Both in different contexts?