Thursday, November 7, 2019

Is guys a pronoun?

I am puzzled as to why anyone would consider guys a pronoun. A plural noun that includes everyone — folks , people — is a noun. When you precedes such a noun — you folks, you peopleyou functions as a vocative, denoting the person or thing addressed or invoked. And as the Oxford English Dictionary says, the vocative you is used “chiefly in apposition to a following noun or noun phrase” (my emphasis). And now I’m remembering the children’s book: “You monkeys, you! You give me back my caps.”

Bill of Occam can help here: we need not multiply entities unnecessarily. To my mind, calling guys a pronoun is just such a feat of multiplication. But if I’m missing something here, please let me know.

A related post
The guys problem

comments: 8

Geo-B said...

A common expression in the east: youse guys.

Michael Leddy said...

Amen. I once cited youse in a post about guys. Forgot all about it.

Elaine said...

I am unsuccessfully trying to make up a sentence with 'guys' in tht slot... "Professor Leddy shot a black look at guy."????

Michael Leddy said...

I'm a little lost. The book Mary Norris is writing about treating just guys , plural, as a pronoun.

Slywy said...

"But “guys,” in the plural, has come to include everyone—it’s a loose version of “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, mesdames et messieurs.”

And those are all . . . not pronouns.

Forget "youse." I love the reference to "yinz." I can hear it now.

Michael Leddy said...

Not pronouns — exactly. Friends, kids, peeps: I don’t get the logic of calling such words pronouns.

Matthew Schmeer said...

Maybe we should pronounce it like it's French: gee (rhymes with "me")

Michael Leddy said...

I see — more pronoun-like. You gees?