Looney Labs Rabbits Mailing list Archive

RE: [Rabbits] Adding More Characters to AYAW??

  • FromDavid Artman <david@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • DateTue, 18 Sep 2007 11:01:49 -0700
> From: Jeff Zeitlin <icehouse@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Your correction directed at me - the less ambiguous construction of
> "When the the Face Hugger dies, he or she may silence another player for
> the rest of the game." - is in fact correct and would have clarified the
> issue admirably - but it should have been directed to Maria, rather than
> to me.

Sorry about that--once e-mail replies get nested about three deep, I
lose track of culpability.
:)

So you're only 'to blame' for giving German props for having a pronoun
(?) or construction of a pronoun (?) that would have 'aimed' the casting
back of "they" squarely at the subject, rather than at the object (the
"most-recent noun read"). By the way, how is that done in German--a
suffix, maybe? A different pronoun all-together (i.e. there's "object"
versus "subject" pronouns, in addition to gender, person, and
plurality)?

Maria's 'to blame' for the initial ambiguity... which, I'd say, isn't
even ambiguous because the most-recent noun cast-back tendency is
natural in English (i.e. in English, "they" was UNambiguously referring
to the object, the way she wrote it).

And I'm 'to blame' for not following thread nesting and for pointing
fingers. I should (and could) have just mentioned the (UN)ambiguity and
shown the correction, without blame. I guess my love of my language got
my hackles up (hence the mention of "prickly pedant"). Again... sorry
for that.

Back to your regularly scheduled rants on AYAW roles....
David