Re: demonstratives

YHL wrote:
>On Mon, 19 Feb 2001, Andreas Johansson wrote:
>
> > Tairzazh have the two demonstrative pronouns _a_ "this" and _li_ "that".
> > Just like the rest of Tairezazh's fairly boring pronouns they're
>inflected
> > for case and number as if they where regular nouns, so one sees forms
> > sentences like this:
>
>Don't overly diss your own pronouns.  :-)  I suspect "fairly boring"
>means people like me would actually be able to learn your conlang and
>have a better than average chance of getting it right!
>
>YHL
I was being ironic, but the regularity is of course a good thing from a
learner's point of view. What I was actually thinking when I introduced the
system was something along the lines of "Well, supposedly there's an
exception to EVERYTHING about languages. And now this guy [I've forgot who]
says there's no natural languages that have regular personal pronouns. Well,
there's something in need of an exception, so Tairezazh 's going to get
perfectly regular pronouns".

Not that I'm deliberately making Tairezazh an "exceptional" language or
anything like that, but at that time I was thinking I was needing to
introduce a few oddities. And what's a better oddity and an negative oddity?

                                                  Andreas
_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

Reply