Talk:Obviative

Does this actually exist in English?

It would seem to me that we have no way of distinguishing salient from non salient objects in a conversation other than to specify them directly. Mere verbal emphasis is not enough. We often have to say who we mean when we use pronouns in a sentence, when it is not immediately obvious.--Tai tapu (talk) 19:53, 14 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The lead section of this page does not provide sufficient description of person marking or the proximate/obviate distinction - or why this is of interest to linguistics - to be of much use to readers who are not already familiar with the concept. Cnilep (talk) 19:42, 30 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I am no t anarabic speaker let alone an expert but i have had a talk with an a tunisian about the obviative in arabic, which might even explain origins of aquel-ese-esto in Spanish(strictly conjecture). If indeed arabic has obviative pronouns, then as aworld language it more than deserves its place at the head of the list of exemplars, but it doesnt even get a mention, so somebody put me right or i'll edit the article myself Ewadyson (talk) 22:42, 11 September 2010 (UTC)andrew[ewadyson] addr shdyson@ntlworld.com 23:00, 11/09/10[reply]

I'm sure that Spanish demonstratives have absolutely nothing to do with Arabic, considering that Latin had three classes of demonstratives, as well (hic/iste/ille), as well as the fact that each of the demonstratives in Spanish can be traced to a given determinative in Latin (este < iste, eso < ipse, aquél < accu-ille). Now, if Arabic does have a proximate/obviative distinction in verbal conjugation as opposed to classes of demonstratives, then it should be in this page, as well. Otherwise, Latin, Greek and English should be on the list, as well — the distinction between the English demonstratives this and that can be explained as a proximate/obviative distinction. In fact, the obsolete yonder demonstrative completed a three-level distinction similar to Latin or to modern Spanish. --Wtrmute (talk) 16:43, 10 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This article is very hard to understand. It gives many examples of usage, but no examples of how it affects the meaning.--90.179.235.249 (talk) 11:59, 14 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Should Korean be included too? 3 levels of separation are distinguished, "yogi" (here, at hand), "kogi" (there, nearby) and "chogi" (there, far away). These in itself are not grammatical constructs, however they are sometimes used in grammatical function too, for example "keujjok(eun)" (that person, nearby) as polite 2nd person (English you/You) when name or social function of person referred to not known. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 164.40.242.212 (talk) 13:33, 19 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

3rd person disambiguation in english + this is ugly

im not an expert, but i feel like it should probably be mentioned that gendered pronouns or lack thereof is not the only way (maybe even not the most important way?) to distinguish between 3rd person subjects. we don't immediately get confused when there are two sentence subjects that use the same gendered pronoun: see anaphora. not to mention this article is so convoluted and hard to parse that it makes a fairly simple, albeit foreign to english concept seem otherworldly (look at discussion above). someone with actual qualifications please draw up a diagram to replace that ungodly "OBV>PROX" syntax. yours truly, Timweak (talk) 17:05, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]