Friday, December 11, 2015

Detail #243: Grammaticalized Greetedness-Marker

Consider a language mostly spoken by people in rather small communities. Let's imagine that somehow, a distinction has appeared whereby persons' names, as well as possibly pronouns referring to people, are marked for whether you have greeted that person that day yet.

For dead people you are related to, small acts of ancestor worship are the dividing line, instead.

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