Quick Questions, Short Answers - No Debate

YeIn Early Modern English, the second person singular pronouns in the nominative, dative/accusative (there called "oblique"), and genitive cases were:
thou, thee, thy/thine
The second person plural pronouns for the same cases were:
ye, you, yourThe same article also lists tables for the personal pronouns in Middle English and in Old English, so you can see the development of the forms over time.So we see in the development of Modern English, the second person singular form was replaced by the second person plural. Why was that? The article suggests that the same thing that happened to French also happened to English, which was influenced by French:

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The practice of matching singular and plural forms with informal and formal connotations is called the T-V distinction, and in English is largely due to the influence of French. This began with the practice of addressing kings and other aristocrats in the plural. Eventually, this was generalised, as in French, to address any social superior or stranger with a plural pronoun, which was believed to be more polite. In French, tu was eventually considered either intimate or condescending (and, to a stranger, potentially insulting), while the plural form vous was reserved and formal. In Early Modern English, ye functioned as both an informal plural and formal singular second-person nominative pronoun.

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So then, in English we've lost the informal form. The creation of forms such as Y'all (contraction of "you all") to create a second person plural is one response to the situation, though it addresses our inability to distinguish between "you" in the singular vs the plural, rather than the lost distinction between familiar and polite forms, which we apparently don't care that much about anymore anyway.BTW, if you want to follow the links to the terms in that quote, go to the page whose link appears at the top of this message.FWIW, yes, I'm a language geek.

Thanks!

Hi dwise1,Do you happen to know how the accusative plural (you) became the nominative singular form?

It didn't everywhere. Some British regional dialects stuck with 'ye', but that's mostly dying out now.The plural overtaking the singular dwise1 already explained - it was because the singular form began to be seen as rude since it was used for social inferiors. As for why 'you' became the dominant form (and this is purely my uniformed speculation), it might be because it was used more often in a sentence than 'ye'. When the distinction between cases lessened in English, this is the one that more people stuck with. Other accusative pronouns are often used as nominative in modern English now that case distinctions are almost gone.

So the nominative plural (ye) was replaced by the accusative plural (you) first?Only later did the new nominative plural overcome the singular.A related question actually, if anybody knows the answer, I've been looking on the web, but can't find it. What were the separate dative forms before they merged with the accusative forms? Or would that take you too far back (like Old English)?Edited by Son Goku, : Additional question.

In Scotland this take the form yous, as in " Whit are yous ***** lookin' at?"TTFN,WKEdited by Wounded King, : No reason given.

Before I propose a new topic I was wondering is there are any evolutionist' that would like to try to build a scientific Creation Model with me according to the Book Of Genesis?A model that can work for Creationists. A model we can present as a working Theory.Is there anyone here that would be willing to participate in trying to do this with me? Some of the evolutionists would have to put aside their views to do this and help steer it and guide it in a way that would be scientific. What it would take, what would be needed, where to start, how to go about doing it, etc etc.Basically i'm asking if some of the evolutionists here were to undertake a project of going about to try to build a Creation Model according to the book of Genesis how would you go about doing it?I'm asking if you were to try to do it, how would you? Where would you start? What would you need? How would you go about doing it?Edited by Chuck77, : No reason given.

I don't know. Both 'ye' and 'thou' survive in some dialects, so I've no idea which got pushed out first in standard English. The dative and locative cases died out in the transition to Early Middle English. The Old English forms are all listed on Wikipedia, and the dative ones actually seem more similar to our modern accusative forms than the old English accusatives.

It might take you back further than that. My source indicates that in OE, the accusative forms of 'thou' and 'ye' were e/ec and eow/eowic, respectively, while the dative forms were limited to being only e and eow. This appears to follow the pattern for the dual number of these pronouns (inc/incit) as well as for all three numbers of the first person pronouns.ABE:My source further states:

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C. M. Millward in A Biography of the English Language 2nd. ed. (1996):

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The first distinction, between dative and accusative, was collapsing even in OE, where it was clearly and consistently retained only in the third person. (pp. 98—99)

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Edited by Jon, : Edited to include further information...Edited by Jon, : No reason given.

Hi Chuck,I admire your willingness to take the scientific approach on board, but there really is no way that this is going to fly. Genesis is completely incompatible with science, from word one. I mean, let's take a look; Huh? Waters? What waters? At the beginning of the universe? The early universe had no waters because the oxygen had not formed. Maybe it's talking about the early Earth. But that doesn't work either, because the very early Earth was too hot for standing water. This passage is in direct contravention of what we know to be true. In short, it's wrong. And this is just the first example. There are many more. Genesis goes on to be wrong about almost everything it describes.So what are you going to do when you come across passages like this that are erroneous? The scientific approach would be to regard them as simply wrong (in fact a scientist would not bother consulting Genesis in the first place to be honest). Are you willing to go that far? Are you willing to concede that much of Genesis is wrong? Or are you going to stubbornly hold on to the text as Holy Writ and throw out the science instead? I can assure you, you can't have both.As reasonable people, we have an innate instinct for compromise. That's what you seem to be trying to achieve here, a compromise between religion and science. That's admirable, in principle, and I applaud your instincts. The trouble is that not all compromises are reasonable. Sometimes, one side of an argument has it right and the other side is just wrong. That's the case here; Genesis is full of errors and trying to shoehorn it into a scientific framework is going to be impossible without compromising one or both. I would start by discarding the Book of Genesis and starting from the evidence instead. That is how science works, not by studying scripture, but by following the evidence. If you do it your way, you won't be engaged in science. "Science" that takes a religious text as its starting point is not science, period.Sorry. I know this is not what you wanted to hear, but I think that to respond to your request in the way you ask for would be to do you a disservice. Genesis has no place in science and science has no place in the Bible. To try and kid you that things are otherwise would be deeply patronising.Mutate and Survive

If you mean a really literal reading of Genesis 1 then you can forget it. Even the YECs don't try that. You might be better off asking for ideas on how to interpret Genesis 1 so that it is in at least rough agreement with science. Although I suspect that you will run into problems even there.

As a devout Christian I have never seen anyway that either of the creation tales found in Genesis can be the basis for any factual description of what happened. There are simply too many points that are refuted by the evidence available today.A Creation model must simply set the Bible stories aside and be based on science to work. In the end that Creation model can best be summed up by the Nicene Creed instead of the Bible.

I don't look up phone numbers in the Bible. I don't expect it to have any useful scientific information either.

Actually, the "Scientific Creation Model" already exists and has existed since 1978.In the first issue of Creation Evolution Journal (Vol 1, Num 1, Summer 1980), Frank Awbrey's article, Yes, Virginia, There is a Creation Model, stated:

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Though creationists carefully avoid stating their model in debates, thereby keeping themselves off the defensive, they have one nonetheless. Here it is in bold outline as extracted from their books and publications.

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The rest is the Scientific Creation Model, which, despite creationists' adamant denial of it being religious or based on religion, is blatantly and obviously just a slightly sanitized rehash of their literal belief in Genesis.The bibliography of that article (not included on-line) led me to an article by ICR lawyer Wendell Bird that was published in Acts & Facts in December 1978. I researched that at a library, verified that Awbrey accurately stated what it stated, and also gleaned from it the "Biblical Creation Model". What Bird was doing was contrasted their "Biblical Creation Model" with their "Scientific Creation Model" in order to show that the "Scientific Creation Model" was not the least bit religious. What he instead demonstrated was that the two were identical except for superficial changes in wording, which I'm sure would be deemed sufficient by a lawyer to change reality. You can see that for yourself on my web page at http://cre-ev.dwise1.net/cmodel.html.Bird's article is cited very widely, including in the US Supreme Court's decision in Edwards v. Aguillard (1986) which found "creation science" to be thinly disguised religion and hence cannot be taught in the public schools. The immediate result of that ruling was for creationists to shift from their game of "Hide the Bible" (which Bird was playing in his article and upon which the entirety of "creation science" is based) to a new game of "Hide the Creationism" as they started using "intelligent design" as their new smokescreen (the infamous editing of the creationist book, Of Pandas and People, into an ID book being a prime example).One big problem with your proposed endeavor is that "creation science" has already thoroughly poisoned the well. We've already witnessed what large numbers of the best and brightest of creationists have been able to accomplish towards your goal, which is nothing whatsover except for lies and deception. Their resounding failure to produce any actual evidence dooms your own attempt to the same fate, hence the poison.Still, it is good that you want to make that effort. I would recommend that first you lay down your goals, far more specific goals than you have just presented. Just exactly what is it that you want to accomplish? Do you want to come up with actual scientific evidence that supports your presumably literalist interpretation of Genesis? Do you want to come up with actual alternative explanations for physical phenomena so as to bring them in line with your presumably literalist interpretation of Genesis? Just exactly what are your goals here?Assuming your answers to my question are "yes", then you need to lay down in sufficient detail the specific interpretation of Genesis that you seek to support. And you will need to translate that into scientific terms, mainly what physical events had to have occurred and when. That will be needed in order to determine what kind of scientific evidence you would expect that would support your particular interpretation of Genesis and, more importantly, what scientific evidence would show your particular interpretation of Genesis to be wrong -- otherwise, how could you possibly ever test your "model"?And far more important than that, what will you do when the evidence stacks up against your particular interpretation of Genesis? The standard reaction of creationists has been to seek to change the evidence, which led directly to their descent into deception and pathological lying. Will that be your own response? Or will you allow for going back and correcting your interpretation of Genesis to better conform with the truth? With reality. Of course, that could also require you to go back and rethink some of your theology, which I assume places impossible demands on the truth of a particular literalistic interpretation of Genesis and its relationship to what you believe about the rest of the Bible and to the entire structure and validity of your faith.A thought for you to consider: just how scientific was the Bible ever supposed to be? It would reflect the views and ideas about the universe and its origins and how it works that were held and understood by the people at the time it was written. Remember what was said about "spiritual meat" and "spiritual milk" and how you would not feed an infant meat, which he's not yet able to digest, but instead milk which he can. Similarly, what would you feed a pre-scientific people, scientific meat or scientific milk?Expecting the Bible to contain fast and hard scientific information just does not make any sense. And expecting to develop a "scientific creation model" in support of your particular interpretation of Genesis would be like expecting to develop a scientific model of human reproduction based on stories of storks and cabbage patches.To recap, your intentions appear to be both honorable and laudable, but your quest is folly.

Well, what would one do?Take the age of the Earth. We could add up the genealogy and the other time intervals, and we could find that if the Bible was right, the universe is ~6000 years old. This gives us a hypothesis. We can derive predictions from this about what we should see if we look at radiometric dating, at dendrochronology, at sedimentology, at the night sky, etc. Then we can compare these predictions with observation, find that they are wrong, and consider the theory falsified. That's science.At this point, though, what the creationists do is start making up ad hoc piecemeal excuses for each particular bit of evidence falsifying the hypothesis --- excuses based not on evidence, but on wishful thinking. Well, that's not science.You can't square the circle. You either have to provisionally accept that the scientific method has given us the right answer, and that Biblical literalism is an untenable hypothesis --- or you can have faith without evidence that science is wrong where it conflicts with Biblical literalism. If you take the first option, you stop being a creationist, but if you take the second option, you stop doing science.It's not a question of the evolutionists "putting aside their views". That's easy, that's what I do when I contemplate Biblical literalism as a hypothesis, treating it the same as any other hypothesis. The problem is that to believe the hypothesis to be unfalsified, I would have to put aside the scientific method itself --- in which case I might be doing creationist apologetics, but I'm not doing creation science.