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Re: Person distinctions in languages?

From:John Quijada <jq_ithkuil@...>
Date:Wednesday, February 2, 2005, 18:27
Steven Williams wrote:
>In this new conlang I'm coming up with, I'm trying to >figure out a way of dividing pronouns and verbal >inflections along the lines of discourse participation >and level of animacy; i.e., whether the thing in >question is involved in the discourse (1st/2nd person) >or not (3rd person) and its level on the animacy >hierarchy (deities/humans/predatory animals/prey >animals/plants/objects/etc). I'm sorely tempted to >scrap the animacy thing altogether and go with a >system that sort of mimics the Japanese classifier >system, which would be a thousand times less >ambiguous.
_____________________ The description of your proposed system sounds somewhat like my system for Ithkuil, where discourse participation plus animacy/inanimacy are two of several parameters which make up the personal reference adjunct system (equivalent to personal pronouns in other languages). For details, see Chapter 8 of the Ithkuil grammar at http://home.inreach.com/sl2120/Ithkuil --John Quijada

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Steven Williams <feurieaux@...>