Saturday, May 16, 2015

Dairwueh: Personal Pronouns

I notice I have not designed the Dairwueh pronoun system yet, which was a bit of a surprise. So, time to get around to it, I guess.

Personal pronouns:
I sgII sgIIIsg mascIIIsg femIIIsg neutI plII plIIIpl animIIIpl inanim
nomverxotkersije, teintxinsera

ja
accvenaxotakn/knas/suje, teinaxitasetarja
datvevitxovitkarsirininitxivitseritjivit
genvedinxodinkenatsuraiŋaindin   xidinserinjivit
loc-instr veder xoderkeŋasuvatiŋainder xider  serar(j)iŋa
 Like in your average Indo-European language, possession is not generally expressed by genitive forms of pronouns.

Possession, instead, is formed by these pronouns - which are inflected for case and number congruence with the possessed noun:

IIIIIImascIIIfemIIIneut
singular vev- xov- kev-suv-jo
pluralade-bev-arv-sarv-(siŋ)
The plural forms may seem rather far removed from the personal pronouns. They are in fact closer related to personal past tense suffixes, which are closely related to former ergative forms that have been lost. For the plural nouns, the ergative forms had a separate oblique stem. The neuter forms are not declined for congruence with their heads.

As for the genitive, there is one peculiarity of some interest. Normally in Dairwueh, a definite subject of a transitive verb is in the genitive, whereas all other subjects are nominative. Pronouns are obviously always definite; however, a split has occurred in the third person.

Both "ker/si" and as "kenat/sura" can stand as subjects of transitive as well as intransitive verbs. The difference is that kenat/sura refers to a more prominent referent, and ker/si to a less prominent one. However, in all other positions, they generally refer to the more prominent referent in general. A dropped subject is generally interpreted as referring to the more prominent referent as well.

With possession, kenat/sura are parsed as reflexive possession, i.e. as referring back to the subject. Kev-/suv- are parsed as referring to some non-subject possessor.

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