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Re: THEORY: The fourth person

From:Thomas R. Wier <trwier@...>
Date:Wednesday, April 28, 2004, 0:27
From:    Danny Wier <dawiertx@...>
> How exactly does the so-called 'fourth person' work in Athabaskan > languages like Navajo (Dine), and do any other languages have it?
Lots of languages have something like it. I can't actually speak to how they work in Athapaskan languages, but in Algonquian languages, there are specific verb forms for an unspecified and generic entity (noted as "X"). Algonquian languages also have a distinction between proximate and obviative forms, quite separate from the X-actants, which select out discourse-functionally salient and nonsalient entities in a discourse. In West Greenlandic, third and fourth persons select out two separate non-1st-non-2nd actants, one of which (I forget which at the moment) is coreferential to the argument of a higher verb. ========================================================================= Thomas Wier "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally, Dept. of Linguistics because our secret police don't get it right University of Chicago half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of 1010 E. 59th Street Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter. Chicago, IL 60637

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Jean-François Colson <fa597525@...>