Any explanation / meaning / backstory is more than welcome, or you can just drop it for everyone to try and resolve.

  • JackFrostNCola@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    Im not sure if the example sentence is legitimate or not but its uncomfortable for my brain.

    I probably would have said “Tom gave Steve his phone back” (steve ownership) or “Tom gave his phone to Steve” (tom ownership)

    • frank@sopuli.xyz
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      4 days ago

      Right, in English you have to rephrase the sentence because the pronoun you need doesn’t exist. There’s just a pronoun for “male person” not one for “subject” or “object” of the sentence.

      That’s why I replied with it to a “what word would you make up?” Question, because that’s what I would bring into English

      • ulterno@programming.dev
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        4 days ago

        Nice. Now what do you do in case of:

        Larry sold a lot of his stuff. … Tom gave Steve his phone.

        Is there another “his” for that?

        • frank@sopuli.xyz
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          4 days ago

          Um in Danglish:

          Larry sold a lot of his(hans) stuff. Tom gave Steve his (sin if it’s Tom’s and hans if it’s Steve’s) stuff.

          Just just for the current sentence(s). Like a new subject would “reset” it

          • ulterno@programming.dev
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            4 days ago

            In the example, I was implying a scenario in which Larry sold Larry’s stuff, which would have included Larry’s phone.
            Tom then gives Larry’s phone to Steve.

            I used ‘stuff’ in the first sentence to prevent revealing ‘phone’ beforehand, in which case it could have become, “Tom gave Steve the phone.”.

    • frank@sopuli.xyz
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      4 days ago

      Also, for what it’s worth, it feels a lot more natural with mixed genders here to me:

      Steve gave Christina his phone