Thursday, June 15, 2017

Sargaĺk: 2nd Person Interaction with Demonstratives

In Sargaĺk, the demonstratives can interact with the 2nd person pronouns in two interesting ways.

When redirecting attention to a new listener in a group with people, the pronoun can combine with the intermediate distance demonstrative. Thus
ʒu-ta-te-tta nen omər ulət
this.peg-you.peg  me comfort give
you, give me comfort
(A rather exasperated call for support when, for instance, talking to an idiot)
This is maybe most often used when talking to someone not directly in front of yourself, such as someone slightly behind you. Some speakers omit case congruence on the ʒur demonstrative. The demonstrative does exhibit gender marking, however, and thus this compound pronoun has gender marking in the second person. Plural marking is also possible. In case of combined genders, the default is the feminine.

If the new addressee is in a reasonable location for being considered the 'primary' addressee, one can, after two or three uses of the ʒur-te pronoun let the new addressee replace the previous one as the main addressee, thus warranting the use of te, rather than ʒur-te. However, if the second addressee is, say, behind your shoulders, or the primary addressee still is referred to often enough, ʒur-te may remain ʒur-te throughout a whole situation.

The next level of demonstratives, the ʒiki/ʒisi-pair, this often is used with a listener who is unknown, probably unseen, or at least far enough that facial features aren't easily recognizable. This would be used, for instance, when calling out to someone unkown or when not even sure anyone is there, such as "hey, is anybody there?". The default gender is feminine, but context may call for masculine - e.g. out on the sea, masculine pronouns are often assumed because men more often travel by boat than women.


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