Monday, November 19, 2012

Detail #5: Intrinsic, implicit referents

Does any natural language use obviative pronouns also to refer to nouns that have not been mentioned as such, but which are kind of intrinsically related to prominent nouns in a sentence?

Something like, say,

children look like them.obv = children look like their parents
house had no him.obv = the house had no master
sheep.plur know.3pl him.obv = the sheep know their shepherd

Not all nouns, necessarily, have their own associated nouns such as these; some have many, differentiated by gender and numbers.

When this is supposedly "normally" obviative or an indirect reference like this may be unclear from context.

Also, challenge #1 still stands. I have personally made no progress on it.

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