User talk:Tc14Hd

Determiners & pronouns

Thanks for your engagement on the project!

The recent changes you've made to the category of words like somebody should be reversed. These are proforms, but not pronouns. Please, consult before making changes like this. Brett (talk) 15:41, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

Hello Brett! Can you explain to me why "somebody" isn't a pronoun? Pronouns substitute nouns, which "somebody" does ("Sombody is here" → "Peter is here"). It may not be a personal pronoun like "he", but it's still a pronoun and definitely not a determiner as the page was suggesting. English Wiktionary also has "somebody" as a pronoun. Tc14Hd (talk) 16:04, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

Well, a super simple explanation was in the note you deleted at the bottom of one page. Also, as I suggested above, your idea of a pronoun confuses pronouns and pro-forms. For example who is a pronoun, but it doesn't "substitute nouns". Longer explanations are available on the pronouns and determiners pages, and in The Cambridge grammar of the English language beginning on p. 423. One test you can do is the tag-question test. If you say something like that won't work, will it?, the last word there must be a pronoun, and the words in question never work there.--Brett (talk) 17:24, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

I read the Wikipedia article of pronouns again, and I found the following:

"The determiners starting with some-, any, no, and every- and ending with -one, -body, -thing, -place (e.g., someone, nothing) are often called indefinite pronouns, though others consider them to be compound determiners."

The Wikipedia article of indefinite pronouns also lists "somebody". Even though the quote says that others consider them as "compound determiners", I can only find ~800 results on Google for that term[1]. Online dictionaries also seem to think that "somebody" is a pronoun ([2][3][4][5][6][7]). While there might be some disagreement what part of speech "somebody" is, the majority thinks it's a pronoun. So that's why I think it should also be that way here. Tc14Hd (talk) 21:39, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

As your sources show, there is disagreement on this topic. But the arguments set out in The Cambridge grammar of the English language for why there these words are determiners are compelling and deserve engagement. The lexical categories on Simple English Wiktionary follow those of CGEL across the whole lexicon, and for consistency, these words should too. If you'd like to propose some change to this, please try to get buy in from the user community instead of making a unilateral change. In the meantime, I would ask that you revert your changes.--Brett (talk) 13:23, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

Well, if it's official policy to use the categories of that book, I'll revert my edits. But I still think it's a bad idea to use a formal academic grammar book to define the categories of a dictionary which is supposed to describe words in a simple way. Since no other online dictionary defines "somebody" as a determiner (at least I haven't seen such a dictionary), it will potentially confuse laymen. Even Simple Wiktionary itself defines determiner in a way that doesn't include words like "somebody" because its definition requires a determiner to mark a noun (In sentences like "Somebody sleeps." there is no noun which "somebody" could mark). So all in all, I think this will just confuse people (as it has confused me), but I'll revert my edits for consistency. Tc14Hd (talk) 19:22, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

Thank you!--Brett (talk) 20:46, 11 November 2022 (UTC)