Hands in pockets

[John Cowan <cbmvax!UUNET.UU.NET!snark.thyrsus.com!cowan>]

Bruce Gilson and Guy Steele have taken me to task about an offhand comment
about "He put [his] hands in [his] pockets", citing examples when you may,
indeed, wish to put:

        your hands in another's pockets, or
        another's hands in your pockets, or even
        another's hands in another's pockets.

The point I was trying to make was of a different order.  English >demands<
specification of whose hands and whose pockets -- English can't be elliptical.
It's easy to assume unconsciously that if English requires a distinction,
so does Lojban -- whereas in Lojban anything can be ellipsized, right down
to "zo'e co'e" which means "something-or-other is-a-you-know-what".

Guy Steele says that the possessor is unspecified, but in fact the meaning
of anything that's unspecified is to be glorked from context.  So there is
no real way to distinguish (except by using attitudinals) between "I don't
want to say" and ">you< know what I mean!".

We all know about optional tense and the like; I was simply concerned to point
out that possessory information is equally optional, and to reinforce this
by mentioning that many other languages closely related to English -- German
and Spanish, probably many others as well -- elide the possessor in this
same circumstance.

Or as we say in my family:

        You can pick your friends,
        and you can pick your nose,
        but you can't [socially] pick your friend's nose!

--
cowan@snark.thyrsus.com         ...!uunet!cbmvax!snark!cowan
                e'osai ko sarji la lojban