Pronoun notes

The third person pronouns don't have possessive adjectives. It does have genitive pronouns which come after the possessed object. They are not used with the accompanitive preposition ya. The forms are yiha, masculine; yihes, feminine; and yihon, plural. The neuter genitive is taken from a different stem and I have not sat down and properly documented it yet.

The third person pronouns are ta, he; da, she; and ten, it. The plural pronoun is still lurking out there in the world of potential darkness, I think it is going to be *te. The forms ta and da were borrowed from a language sketch of a language I was using on the Planetpii list when I was a member. They were used as person markers, titles before proper names in the Khamtra language of the Old Dogs Pinclan language. They were borrowed from item markers for male and female objects in notes I took from Linear B. There is something counter-intuitive to me in having da as a feminine pronoun. I like it!

Feminine words: nouns, adjectives and pronouns, add the accusative ending -n. I thought masculine and neuter nouns take no similar marking of the accusative case. I have noticed that the next rule in my file says that animate masculines mark the accusative in the demonstrative pronoun and the adjective form, adding the tag -go. Apparently it is not marked in the noun although the genitive pronoun takes the same tag, yihago. There is no description of what defines a noun as animate. I shall have to decide that as I go along.

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!

Sentence 4.10

Te katatôkí tí ya bodú!

Those cigarettes are mine.

I knew there was reason why the plural ending of katatôkí was significant. It's not just treated as a plural noun the ending also means it's a collective noun. I realised that because the base word tôkí, tobacco, had to be a collective noun, small things found together. So 'a cigarette' would have to be 'one of the cigarettes. Must remember that.

The pronoun bodú takes the accompanative particle ya when it is used as a possessive. This is different to 'whose, of who' which was tamú chí in yesterday's entry. Different rules for different pronouns. I wonder if I will rationalise that in a later entry.