‪In "she saw him", it's clear there are two third persons because they're of different genders. In "she saw her", it's clear because otherwise we'd say "she saw herself".

In "she saw her dog" it's not clear. This has always bugged me.

But if we spoke an Algonquian language, we could easily make it clear!

These languages have a "proximate" third person, meaning the closest or most important one, and an "obviative" third person, meaning the farther or less important one. Sometimes the obviative is called the "fourth person".

In other languages, like Russian, we can make it clear a different way: they have, not only reflexive pronouns like "myself, his self, herself, itself", but also a reflexive possessive: sort of like "she saw herself's dog".

Algonquian languages are a family of native American languages including:

Arapahoan
Blackfoot
Cheyenne
Cree–Montagnais–Naskapi
Eastern Algonquian
Menominee
Meskwaki-Sauk-Kickapoo
Miami–Illinois
Ojibwe–Potawatomi
Shawnee

I got pulled into this from trying to understand a bit about Hopi and Navaho before I go back to the Navaho Nation. Which are *not* Algonquian languages. Hopi is an Uto-Aztecan language, and Navaho is Athabascan. But then I realized I'm incredibly ignorant of American language groups.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obviative
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algonqui

A map of North American with regions speaking Algonquian languages marked, mainly in eastern and central Canada and the eastern United States, but also in regions of the central United States.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Algonquian_language_map_with_states_and_provinces.svg
0

If you have a fediverse account, you can quote this note from your own instance. Search https://mathstodon.xyz/users/johncarlosbaez/statuses/116103994972236609 on your instance and quote it. (Note that quoting is not supported in Mastodon.)