Sunday, February 8, 2015

Detail #142: Phonologically Absent Inanimate Pronoun

In a language with a gender system consisting of, say, masculine, feminine, inanimate or just animate, inanimate, it is possible to pull off a system whereby the inanimates simply lack a pronoun.

If the language marks verbs for transitivity (possibly the marker is a remainder of a pronoun that historically was present), the absence of a pronoun implies inanimate object. For subjects, absence of a subject has the same effect. Prepositions/postpositions are assumed to have an object, so absence again amounts to third person inanimate.

Of course, an inanimate pronoun is likely soon to return into such a language by repurposing demonstratives or even some particle of some kind.

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