eshapard:

johmue:

sudanglo:Tio - pronoun - refers, in a non-selective way, to a concrete or abstract thing (aĵo, afero, ideo) - as far as I am aware, never to an individual person.

Tio estas mia patro.

Hey, where did you find that sentence? I've also read that tio was never to be used with a person... sounded a bit arbitrary.

Johmue gave a very simple sentence where tio can refer to a person. I know what sudanglo meant to say, but I don't think he put it well.

My best attempt at explaining the proper usage was in the 3-point summary several posts ago. There's actually one last usage that I left out for brevity's sake, because it is less common:

4. Standalone tiu is the demonstrative equivalent of the terms: "everybody" (ĉiu), "somebody" (iu), "nobody" (neniu). Think of it as meaning "thatbody"! Most anglophones don't have problems with neniu and iu (nobody, somebody). So remember that tiu follows the same pattern - it would be grammatically correct to use it where you'd use the other -u correlatives to refer to people.

--> Mi demandis tion al la politikisto. Tiu donis nur duonrespondon. - I asked the politician that. He ("thatbody" ) only gave a half-answer.

Sudanglo, I think, was trying to say that tio can not be used to mean "thatbody" - though it is entirely legitimate to say Tio estas mia patro.

With the inclusion of this 4th point, I think almost all uses of tio and tiu are accounted for.

Tempodivalse:
4. Standalone tiu is the demonstrative equivalent of the terms: "everybody" (ĉiu), "somebody" (iu), "nobody" (neniu). Think of it as meaning "thatbody"! Most anglophones don't have problems with neniu and iu (nobody, somebody). So remember that tiu follows the same pattern - it would be grammatically correct to use it where you'd use the other -u correlatives to refer to people.

--> Mi demandis tion al la politikisto. Tiu donis nur duonrespondon. - I asked the politician that. He ("thatbody" ) only gave a half-answer.

Sudanglo, I think, was trying to say that tio can not be used to mean "thatbody" - though it is entirely legitimate to say Tio estas mia patro.

With the inclusion of this 4th point, I think almost all uses of tio and tiu are accounted for.

OK, so tio can't be used for the special 'that-body' usage, but it's alright if you use it to mean something like, 'that thing is my father?' where tio is 'that thing'?

My grammar book says:

In contrast to the pronouns ending in -u (tiu, kiu, ĉiu, iu, neniu), a similar series ending in -o refers to an object, fact or action not definitely specified (but never to a person)

Can you recommend a good grammar book?

RE thatbody: Hopefully I'm missing something that you can clear up here. It sounds like something very simple is being over-complicated.

I don't think of the body in anybody, somebody, everybody, nobody as having any special significance. Isn't it just indicating that we're talking about a person? I don't see how joining those words gives them a different meaning from some body, any body, etc. Don't they all just mean some person, any person, etc.?

So wouldn't 'thatbody' just mean 'that person'?

If there are pronouns for 'that one' and 'that person' and they are the same word in Esperanto, then I think you'd have to use context to tell them apart. Each one seems to indicate one of a set (one person out of all people; one thing out of all similar things).

Wouldn't the context then effectively tell you that the 'one' in 'that one' is a person even if you knew nothing about this special that-body usage?

Just remembered that synonyms for anybody, somebody, everybody, and nobody. are anyone, someone, everyone, and no one. (That one, fits in perfectly in the series. No need to make them all compound words; no one isn't)

So if tiu can mean 'that one' (as in that person), or 'that one' (as in that non-person thing), well then the same is true of the English way of saying 'that one'. In fact, one is commonly used as a pronoun for a single (but not anyone in particular) person... well maybe that use isn't so common anymore at least not in the USA. Jeeves said it a lot.

Are there different grammatical consequences wen Tiu means (that person-one) compared to when tiu means (that non-person-one)? Does it cause anything else in the sentence to change?

If one thought of the pronoun use of tiu as having the same flexibility as the English phrase 'that one' to point to either a person or a non-person thing, would that cause any problems?

eshapard:

johmue:

sudanglo:Tio - pronoun - refers, in a non-selective way, to a concrete or abstract thing (aĵo, afero, ideo) - as far as I am aware, never to an individual person.

Tio estas mia patro.

Hey, where did you find that sentence? I've also read that tio was never to be used with a person... sounded a bit arbitrary.

For instance:

LLZ:Sekve, volu vidi, mi volas, ke li nun estu jam tute, tio estas mia leĝa filo, kaj ke li estu nomata tiel, kiel mi, Dobĉinskij.

eshapard:Can you recommend a good grammar book?

The two most well-regarded are PAG (Plena Ilustrita Gramatiko) and PMEG (Plena Manlibro de Esperanta Gramatiko), but they are written in Esperanto. My preference is for PAG, but it is highly technical - some would say overkill. I'm not familiar with other grammars.

Are there different grammatical consequences wen Tiu means (that person-one) compared to when tiu means (that non-person-one)? Does it cause anything else in the sentence to change?

I would say no - the sentence will work the same, the only difference being that non-person tiu either has an explicit noun, or implies a noun already established in context.

It seems you're suggesting we don't need point 4: instead, we could see that-person tiu as being shorthand for tiu persono (grouping it into point 3 from my breakdown on the last page).

My gut reaction, however, is that this isn't quite right. If we assume that tiu follows the Slavic model, then it cannot be a shorthand for tiu homo/persono, because in Slavic languages the gender of tiu depends on the gender of the person in question, not the grammatical gender of the noun "person", "human", etc.

To me, this suggests we need a new category to explain this use of tiu - the demonstrative equivalent of terms like anybody, everybody which can only be applied to people.

So wouldn't 'thatbody' just mean 'that person'?

Yes. The problem is that this explanation doesn't tell us the difference between Tio estas mia patro and Tiu estas mia patro.

Incidentally, note that tio has a more general meaning than "that thing", so the first sentence does not mean "That thing is my father". It's more of a very general referent that has to be established in context - just like in English, you can't make sense of "That annoys me" unless you know what "that" refers to.

If one thought of the pronoun use of tiu as having the same flexibility as the English phrase 'that one' to point to either a person or a non-person thing, would that cause any problems?

Actually, I think this is a reliable way of looking at it. You might've hit the jackpot...

I need to come back tomorrow on a fresher head, though. It doesn't help me that I never "learned" the rules for tiu-tio distinction - once I discovered it operates the same way as in Russian, it was just a matter of intuition... So now it is harder to express it formally.

eshapard:

johmue:

sudanglo:Tio - pronoun - refers, in a non-selective way, to a concrete or abstract thing (aĵo, afero, ideo) - as far as I am aware, never to an individual person.

Tio estas mia patro.

Hey, where did you find that sentence?

Nowhere. I just said it.

I've also read that tio was never to be used with a person... sounded a bit arbitrary.

It's a common misconception that "tio" is never to be used with a person.

nornen:

eshapard:

johmue:

sudanglo:Tio - pronoun - refers, in a non-selective way, to a concrete or abstract thing (aĵo, afero, ideo) - as far as I am aware, never to an individual person.

Tio estas mia patro.

Hey, where did you find that sentence? I've also read that tio was never to be used with a person... sounded a bit arbitrary.

For instance:

LLZ:Sekve, volu vidi, mi volas, ke li nun estu jam tute, tio estas mia leĝa filo, kaj ke li estu nomata tiel, kiel mi, Dobĉinskij.

Thanks, Nornen!

Tempodivalse:
Incidentally, note that tio has a more general meaning than "that thing", so the first sentence does not mean "That thing is my father". It's more of a very general referent that has to be established in context - just like in English, you can't make sense of "That annoys me" unless you know what "that" refers to.

Yeah, I was trying to use 'thing' as the most general noun there is. As in, if I had to say what the that in 'That annoys me' refers to, and I had no idea of the context, I'd have to say it refers to some thing... there's no other noun I can think of that would work.

johmue:
It's a common misconception that "tio" is never to be used with a person.

Any idea why that is?