Pronoun Problems

[Liberal]

A question for the resident linguists:

Is there any natural language (active or dead) that has successfully handled the so-called "gay porn problem"? You can see the problem in the following sentence.

"As George and Bill sat quietly, he placed his hand on his thigh."

Well, who placed whose hand on whose thigh? Note that the problem does not exist for mixed sexes.

"As George and Rhonda sat quietly, she placed her hand on his thigh."

For mixed sexes, any combination of pronouns will render a clear meaning: "...he placed his hand on her thigh," "...he placed her hand on his thigh," "...she placed his hand on her thigh." And now, in the context of mixed sexes, even "...he placed his hand on his thigh" tells us exactly what happened.

The problem is not limited to porn, of course, as in "George and Bill decided to play some football, so he threw the ball to him." That's just what the phenomenon is called.

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"It is lucky for rulers that men do not think." — Adolf Hitler

[BurnMeUp]

Well the problem could be easily fixed by a writer who isn't pronoun happy or is able to rework sentences.

Example:

old... As George and Bill sat quietly, he placed his hand on his thigh."

"As they sat quietly, George placed his hand on Bill's thigh"



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Magnificent to behold - Greatly to be praised.

[Flypsyde]

Yeah, I gotta admit, I don't see this as a problem. Any writer worth his ink knows that reworkink an unclear sentence like the original example is the best way to handle this. No offense meant if you wrote the original sentence, Libertarian, but the placement of the pronouns and their antecedents is pretty shoddy, and could be reworked without any significant problem or effort.

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Then he said, "That is that."
And then he was gone.
-Dr. Seuss, The Cat in the Hat

[Fretful Porpentine]

Well, in Latin you can solve the problem by using "hic" for one guy and "ille" for the other. When it comes to gay menage-a-trois porn, you still have a problem, but under such circumstances I wouldn't necessarily be thinking about grammar anyway.

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"Don't take life too serious, son -- it ain't nohow permanent."

[Liberal]

BurnMeUp

"As they sat quietly, George placed his hand on Bill's thigh[.]"

Yep, that works more or less, but how do you resolve this one (gracefully)?

"As they sat quietly, George placed Bill's hand on George's thigh."

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"It is lucky for rulers that men do not think." — Adolf Hitler

[Flypsyde]

Any writer worth his ink knows that reworkink

Yes, folks, I've finally given away my true identity. I'm Schultz from Hogan's Heroes.
Jeez, reworkink?!?!? Proofreading is a virtue...


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Then he said, "That is that."
And then he was gone.
-Dr. Seuss, The Cat in the Hat

[Liberal]

FlipSide

No offense taken. I ran into the problem when researching artificial languages. A linguist mentioned it with an example similar to the one I gave, but offered no solution and no history.

The simple example in the OP is probably reworkable, but with many antecedal references in a single paragraph, the problem amplifies greatly.

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"It is lucky for rulers that men do not think." — Adolf Hitler

[Liberal]

Fretful Porpentine

How do "hic" and "ille" work? Is there some sort of primary antecedent and secondary antecedent? Is it the same for all declensions or cases?

Flypsyde

Sorry for misspelling your name.

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"It is lucky for rulers that men do not think." — Adolf Hitler

[BurnMeUp]

Not to be your personal free editor or anything but try something like this:

old: "As they sat quietly, George placed Bill's hand on George's thigh."

"As the sat quietly together, George grasped Bill's hand gently yet firmly and placed it on his thigh, and began guiding it on it's journey upward..."





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Magnificent to behold - Greatly to be praised.

[Strainger]

Gee, BurnMeUp, have you ever thought of trying to get published? :D

[metroshane]

It's called dangling your participle (is that gay enough for ya?) and you learned how to fix it in 10th grade English.

John ran his hand up his thigh while talking to Bob.

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We live in an age that reads to much to be wise, and thinks too much to be beautiful--Oscar Wilde

[Liberal]

BurnMeUp

"As the sat quietly together, George grasped Bill's hand gently yet firmly and placed it on his thigh, and began guiding it on it's journey upward..."

But how do you know, from that sentence whether George placed Bill's hand on George's thigh or on Bill's own thigh? Since it was a problem addressed in the context of constructing artificial languages, and after giving the matter considerable thought, I really do believe the problem is a genuine linguistic ambiquity, and not just a matter of writing technique.

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"It is lucky for rulers that men do not think." — Adolf Hitler

[BurnMeUp]

Actually Strainger, i'm working on it <smile>


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Magnificent to behold - Greatly to be praised.

[Liberal]

metroshane

Well, no. A dangling participle is like this: "After sitting for hours, a fish was caught." Who sat for hours, the fish?

The gay porn problem is a problem of declension.

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"It is lucky for rulers that men do not think." — Adolf Hitler

[metroshane]

Really? I guess I'm confused. From the Purdue writing lab (forgot link, sorry)...

A participle is a verbal that is used as an adjective and most often ends in -ing or -ed

"placed his hand" -placed is adjectiving (real word?) hand.

Also from Purdue...

Since the doer of the action expressed in
the participle has not been clearly stated, the participial phrase is said to be a dangling modifier.

Am I misreading the rub?

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We live in an age that reads to much to be wise, and thinks too much to be beautiful--Oscar Wilde

[Keeves]

I'm no expert linguist, but I suspect that this problem is not solvable, because it is a direct result of (1) the author's choice to use pronouns rather than nouns, and (2) in the language of the author's choice, the same pronouns apply to both subjects (objects?) of the sentence.

As the OP pointed out, this problem does not exist when two different sexes are involved. But gender is only one aspect of the pronoun; number is another. The problem will exist if both are plural, but not if one is singular and the other is plural.

Example: "The Yankees played against the Mets, and they were sad that they won." The two "they"s refer to different teams, and it is not clear who won.

Example: "The Yankees played against the Mets, and they were happy that they won." The two "they"s refer to the same team, and it is still not clear who won.

Example: "The Yankees' manager watched the Yankees play against the Mets, and he was happy that they won." The two "they"s refer to different teams, but you can figure out from context that the "they" refers to the Yankees.

[metroshane]

A little cleverness would fix it anyway.
________________________________________
As George and Bill sat quietly, he placed his hand on his thigh."
_________________________________________

As they sat quietly, George placed his hand on bill's thigh.

...which is horribly passive.

rather...George placed his hand on Bill's thigh while they sat quietly.

or if you're not into gay porn.

George placed his hand on his thigh while sitting quietly with Bill.

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We live in an age that reads to much to be wise, and thinks too much to be beautiful--Oscar Wilde

[Liberal]

To The Moderator

I see they changed the title of the thread.

Let it be known that I am not bigotted against gays (or anyone else), and that, as a Libertarian, I believe peaceful honest people should be free to pursue their own happiness in their own way. I fail to see how a phrase, commonly used by linguists, can possibly be considered against the rules at a site where the "F" word, and other verbal trash, is slung around routinely. I do, however, respect the right of the moderator, as an authorized representative of the site owner, to do as he pleases.

Keeves

The simple examples shown here so far were merely intended to illustrate the so-called gay porn problem. The problem is greatly exacerbated when you try to extend same sex references for an entire paragraph. Try, for example, to take the story of George and Bill for any length, and you will soon discover that you lose all track of who is doing what to whom unless you eschew pronouns altogether, in which case the writing becomes clumbsier than a rhino in a flower garden.

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"It is lucky for rulers that men do not think." — Adolf Hitler

[Keeves]

Many thanks to whoever changed the title of this thread. Far too many threads have vague titles which are either misleading or have nothing at all to do with the contents of the thread. I end up looking in many more threads than I really want to, just to see what they are about. I wish people would be more considerate.

[Keeves]

The simple examples shown here so far were merely intended to illustrate the so-called gay porn problem. The problem is greatly exacerbated...I understand and I agree. My point was only that the problem is inherent to the nature of pronouns, and it will exist more severely in languages which have a few general pronouns, and it will exist less severely in languages which have many specialized pronouns.

Example: "John saw his wife standing on his yacht and said, "Boy, is she beautiful!'" It is ambiguous here, whether John is commenting on his wife's beauty, or the boat's beauty. This is because boats are among the few inanimate objects which are informally accepted as having a gender in English.

The above example would not be ambiguous in English if the wife were standing on a street, or a truck, or almost anything else. But in other languages, which lack an "it", and in which all nouns are gendered, "She is beautiful" would still be ambiguous, for all cases where the wife was standing on a feminine noun.

[Liberal]

CatInHat

But "Bill and George" is the compound subject of the sentence. I think Keeves is right. The problem is indemic to the morphosyntax of English.

Algonkian would solve the problem by saying:

"Bill an George sat quietly. George placed his (proximate, i.e., George's) hand on his (obviative, i.e., Bill's) thigh.", etc.

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"It is lucky for rulers that men do not think." — Adolf Hitler

[Polycarp]

A dangling participle is just a form of misplaced modifier. A typical example: "I knew a man with a wooden leg named John." "Why was his leg named John?"

"As Bill and George sat on the dock, dangling their participles..." they weren't. Their participles were firmly attached to their names by the context of the "their" in the phrase. A true dangler occurs when the participle is not in the same county with the word it supposedly modifies.

Question: I've always had the opinion that a reflexive refers to the subject where there's any room for ambiguity. So if Bill took George's hand and placed it on his own thigh, it was clearly Bill's thigh in question. If this is accurate, it ought to solve Libertarian's OP. Frustrated grammarians, please advise.

Libertarian seems to imply that there are further problems with the continuing love life of George and Bill and how to recount it without ambiguity. Care to fill us in on more of the same?

[metroshane]

As Bill and George sat on the dock, dangling their participles..." they weren't. Their participles were firmly attached to their names by the context of the "their" in the phrase. A true dangler occurs when the participle is not in the same county with the word it supposedly modifies
_______________________________________

In your sentence, that is correct. But your sentence is nowhere constructed like the OP.

"placed his hand..." as a participle phrase is seperated from the indentifiable subjects by and entire phrase.

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We live in an age that reads to much to be wise, and thinks too much to be beautiful--Oscar Wilde

[Lucky]

In Nepali, these pronoun situations are less of a problem. Pronouns reflect not only the gender and number of persons to whom they refer, but also the person's social status. To use you as an example:

you (high respect) tapaii
you (middle respect) timi
you (low respect) ta

If Bill and George were of different social standings, there would be no problem in understanding who put whose hand where. Of course, if they were of the same class, ambiguity would still exist, but as appropriate pronouns are chosen on the basis of caste, money, age and a dozen other factors, one would usually be able to make a distinction.

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Don't get me wrong--I love life. I'm just finding it harder and harder to keep myself amused.

[Fretful Porpentine]

About hic and ille (if you're still interested):

These are both demonstrative pronouns, but as Latin doesn't have any third person personal pronouns, they tend to substitute for "he" and "she" as well. (The feminine nominative forms are "haec" and "illa." Both pronouns are declinable by gender, number, and case, but as I don't feel like typing out the whole chart, you'll have to look elsewhere for the other forms.)

Anyway, "hic" translates roughly as "this guy" (probably Bill, within the context of your sentence, since he was mentioned most recently), and "ille" as "that guy." Also, you'd use the reflexive pronoun ipse to indicate that someone was placing his own hand on someone else's thigh. In other words, if Bill was the one making the move, the sentence would read,

"Cum George et Bill quiete sedebant, hic manum ipsum in femore illius posuit."

Whereas if George were doing the same thing, the second part of the sentence would read:

"... ille manum ipsum in femore huius posuit."

Or if George were placing Bill's hand on his own thigh:

"... ille manum huius in femore ipsum posuit."

Etc., etc.

[Fretful Porpentine]

Correction: Latin does have third person personal pronouns -- the whole "is, ea, id" family. It's just that for reasons of clarity, they often use demonstratives instead. Personally, I can never remember how to decline the damn things, so I tend to forget they exist.

Part of the problem with the OP's sentence is that you have a confusion between the subject of the sentence and the pronouns. The subject was more than one person, "George and Bill," yet you used singular pronouns. This is as liable to confusion as saying "When the Dallas Cowboys won the Super Bowl, he was named MVP."

A correct way to have written the sentence would have been "As George sat quietly with Bill, he placed his hand on his thigh." This makes it clear that George is the subject of both the sentence and the pronoun "he". Granted there could still be some confusion over whether "his hand" and "his thigh" were George's or Bill's, but now that you've
established George as the subject of the first pronoun, the reader should assume the subsequent pronouns also refer to George unless explicitly stated otherwise.

[Konrad]

In Polish you always use either 'swoj' or 'jego'. Swoj means 'his own' and jego means 'his', always in the sense of the other person. The female forms would be "swoja" and "jej".

Polish has other nice things that make it more logical than other languages. For example there are words for OR, XOR, and NOR. (in the programming sense of the terms)

[moriah]

As George and Bill sat quietly, the former placed the latter's hand on his thigh.

As George and Bill sat quietly, the former placed his hand on his own thigh.

As George and Bill sat quietly, the former placed the latter's hand on the latter's thigh.

As George and Bill sat quietly, the former placed his hand on the latter's thigh.

As George, Bill, and Rod sat quietly, the first placed the second's hand on the third's thigh. Rod told George, "You look tense. Let me give you a back massage."

Begin cheesey waa-waa background music....

[Liberal]

I found the answer.

Algonkian has two categories of third person pronouns called "proximate" and "obviative" to "distinguish the 3rd person of greatest discourse salience from all other 3rd persons in a given span," according to a paper from the University of California at Santa Cruz.

Thanks everyone.

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"It is lucky for rulers that men do not think." — Adolf Hitler

[matt_mcl]

In Esperanto, there is a partial solution to this problem: reflexives.

Consider the sentence "Sitting quietly with Bill, George put his hand on his thigh."

In Esperanto, you can easily construct all four (assuming only George and Bill are present) alternatives:

1) Sidante trankvile kun Vilchjo, Georgo metis lian manon sur lian femuron.
2) ...Georgo metis sian manon sur lian femuron.
3) ...Georgo metis lian manon sur sian femuron.
4) ...Georgo metis sian manon sur sian femuron.

In 1, there are no reflexives ("si"); George is putting Bill's hand on Bill's thigh.
In 2, George is putting his own hand on Bill's thigh.
In 3, George is putting Bill's hand on George's thigh.
In 4, George is putting his hand on his own thigh.

Basically, in this case "lia" means "his" (not the subject of the clause) and "sia" means "his own" (referring to the subject of the clause).

Note another dangling participle problem:

George groped Bill as he sat quietly. Who's sitting? Well...

1) Georgo palpis Vilchjon, sidante trankvile.
2) Georgo palpis Vilchjon, sidantan trankvile.

In 1, "sidante" ("sitting") is an adverb, and modifies the action of groping and therefore refers to George.
In 2, "sidantan" is an adjective, which is accusative and therefore goes with the accusative "Vilchjon" ("Bill").

[CatInHat]

When I took Russian back in college, they taught us about a reflexive pronoun, which always refers back to the subject of the sentence (I think; it's been a while). So if you were trying to say

"George and Bill sat quietly. George placed George's hand on George's thigh"

you would say "... George placed (his own) hand on (his own) thigh" using the reflexive form.

From context, you would know that if the sentence read "... George placed (his own) hand on his thigh", the last "his" refers to Bill, not back to the subject of the sentence.

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Never attribute to malice anything that can be attributed to stupidity.
-- Unknown

[NanoByte]

I think this is all a plot to change this into a queer forum. ;)

Yes, Mike King pulls out the problems in proper order. The highest order problem is the violation of number. You can't get the rest sorted out until you rectify this, as Mike did well.

From the Purdue writing lab (forgot link, sorry)...

A participle is a verbal that is used as an adjective and most often ends in -ing or -ed "placed his hand" -placed is adjectiving (real word?) hand.

In conventional English grammar, 'placed' here doesn't "adjective" 'hand'; 'hand' is the object of 'placed'. In the OP sentence, this is only a "dangling" participle in the sense that it doesn't match up with the number of its only possible (compound) antecedent.

The only problem with using 'his own' or 'former' and 'latter', is that in English, though fixing up the logic, these play hell rhetorically with most writing -- shifting emphasis subtly or making the writing stilted. Only conclusion: English sucketh.

Note to SDMB QA Dept.:

1. OP author found his own answer (while putting his hand on someone else's keyboard?).

2. All gays will now acquire Algonkian as a first language. (Maybe Esperanto as a second.)

3. Nepali would not be recommended, considering present feelings about caste systems. Over here we only have the homeless, the muddled class and the Net magnates.

4. Don't study grammar at Purdue. . .at least if you're one who intends to use the handle 'metroshane'.

5. If you 'hic in Latin, you ain't 'ille'.

6. We never were told who won the ball game.

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Konrad:

English has a word for NOR; it is 'nor'. What it doesn't have is a word for NAND. Does Polish have such?

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But my bitch about English pronouns is not that they don't distinguish enough, but that they necessarily overdistinguish. Like most common present languages, it requires that one specify gender when one wishes not to. The result is then that, in the third person, either a plural pronoun, or the two opposite-gendered pronouns, conjuncted or disjuncted, is/are used in place of a gender-indifferent singular pronoun. Beyond that, number must be specified when one doesn't want it, a problem that extends beyond pronouns to nouns and verbs (as above). Don't quote me, but WHAT IS SO DAMNED UNIQUE ABOUT 'ONE'? I understand there are worse languages -- ones that distinguish 'one' from 'two' from 'more than two', but I don't have to worry about them. Some also have a first+second-person 'we' distinguishable from a first+third-person 'we', which could be nice sometimes, but I don't get into much trouble without this combo. But maybe what both we-you and we-they need most are a pair of pronouns that specify the good guys/gals from the bad guys/gals, huh? Or maybe the ignorant from the SDers. Then how about one for the cc:'d one? Of course, moriah pointed out to us in that chemistry thread that we do have subscripts: George, when greeting Bill, slapped himg on hisbback. (Sorry for my lack of gaity in this homo-determinative society. ;) ) Of course, the superior sex would be otherwise designated: Georgia, when greeting Billy Jo, embraced herbj.

Ray (Now about those hermaphrodites. . .)

[Konrad]

English has a word for NOR; it is 'nor'. What it doesn't have is a word for NAND. Does Polish have such?

The english nor is not the progamming NOR. NOR is inclusive OR: A or B or both. There is no such thing as NAND. AND is inclusive by definition. XOR is exclusive or. A or B but not both.

[DrMatrix]

You can make one of the characters first person as in: "As George and I sat quietly, I placed my hand on what I thought was his thigh."

Wait a minute. You mean Bill and George are GAY? ... My GayDar(TM) really missed them.

Do Hillary and Barbara know their husbands are gay?

Where can I learn Algonkian and Esperanto?

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Virtually yours,

DrMatrix
"A picture is worth a thousand words."

[moriah]

To the OP:

Well, whatever happened to Bill and George? Did they do it? Are they still together? Is the relationship reflexive or dangling?

Tune in next time to a very special forum of The Straight Dope.

"As George and Bill were lying in bed together the next morning, he offered to make him a quiche for breakfast."

Does that answer your question Moriah?

[NanoByte]

The english nor is not the progamming NOR. NOR is inclusive OR: A or B or both. There is no such thing as NAND. AND is inclusive by definition. XOR is exclusive or. A or B but not both.

The programming or hardware 'x NOR y' is simply 'NOT (x OR y)' (inclusive) or (by De Morgan's Theorem) 'NOT x AND NOT y'. Likewise, the English 'It is (neither) man nor beast,' is the same as 'It is not (either) man or beast,' (inclusive) or 'It is not man and not beast.' There certainly is such a thing as 'NAND' in hardware logic. 'NOT (x AND y)'. I don't recall whether it's expressly used in any programming languages.

'XOR' is as you say but has nothing to do with our issue here. ('It is either man and not beast or beast and not man.') 'XNOR' would be the same thing as 'identity', i.e., 'both or neither'. ('It is either both man and beast or it is neither.')

Ray

[douglips]

It's night of the living thread! I just realized that deification solves the gay porn problem quite nicely.
As God sat next to Steve, He placed His hand on his thigh.
Of course, it only works in written communication, and only if you are in a personal relationship with the Lord.