Wednesday, 13 April 2011

Pronoun notes

Ta tent suon kolon as, he has his (own) bicycle.

Ta tent kolon yiha, he has his bicycle. (Hey! Where are you going with that!)

Suon is the third person reflexive possessive. It agrees with the noun. Like the first person possessive the possessed noun is followed by a second possessor after it. The first person is (y)am, the reflexive is (y)as. The reflexive is also used with the second person pronoun kembí.

In the second sentence the reflexive structure is replaced with the genitive pronoun yiha, of him. The possessed noun does not belong to the subject of the sentence. Instead it belongs to a third person. And, unless some agreement has been reached, he may object to someone taking off with his bike. Stop thief!

1 comment:

  1. Ooo, I was thinking about doing this with a new conlang the other day. I love the idea of having lots of pronouns for different referents. It would certainly make English a lot clearer =)

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