Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Detail #59: Limited clusivity

Imagine a language where first-person plurals can be inclusive/exclusive, but only in certain specific situations. The most obvious thing would be to only distinguish inclusive/exclusive in certain cases - say the nominative and the accusative, while merging it in other cases. Another option would be to have it linked to certain verbs. These specific verbs would then have separate markers for inclusive and exclusive first person (probably a separate affix from the first person plural marker). The verbs that have this would be verbs where such a distinction is culturally significant. 

Some verbs could likewise have this in the passive (but not in the active), if it's culturally important in those. 

It would generally not be used productively, though.

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