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oa Het verlies van een persoonlijk voornaamwoord*
Waarom hun straks geen hun meer zeggen
- Amsterdam University Press
- Source: Nederlandse Taalkunde, Volume 25, Issue 2-3, Oct 2020, p. 355 - 362
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- 01 Oct 2020
Abstract
The loss of a personal pronoun. Why they will not be saying hun anymore
The personal pronoun hun ‘them’ meets a lot of criticism in Dutch society, not just from language purists, but from language users in general. This can be attributed to a strong mistrust of the pronoun, given that it is well-known for violating no less than two prescriptive rules, one of which prohibits its use as a subject, and the other its use as a direct object or complement of a preposition. This has resulted in a tendency to avoid the use of this personal pronoun across the board. Despite the fact that hun ‘them’ as a personal pronoun has the advantage of exclusively referring to animate or even human individuals, I argue that it is fighting a losing battle with the other personal pronouns that are used to express third person plural. I conclude that it will withdraw from the competition in order to commit itself entirely to its function as a possessive pronoun ‘their’, in which capacity it is unique.