Re: demonstratives

Padraic Brown wrote:

> On Mon, 19 Feb 2001, James O'Connell wrote:
>
> >As I'm doing my demonstrative system in elenyo right now, I was wondering
> >how other people had done this. Do you have seperate demonstratives to
> >demonstrative pronouns or are they combined? Do they show case etc?
Tokana has a full system of determiners, which also double as pronouns.  These
elements mark the person, number, animacy, and case of the noun phrase:

  ne         "she, he (absolutive)"
  ne ikei    "the dog (absolutive)"

  se         "they (animate, absolutive)"
  se ikei    "the dogs (absolutive)"

  te         "it (absolutive)"
  te halma   "the book (absolutive)"

  tse        "they (inanimate, absolutive)"
  tse halma  "the books (absolutive)"

There are no demonstrative determiners in Tokana, but the regular determiners
are often used with demonstrative force:  "Te halma", for example, can mean
"the book", "this book", or "that book", depending on context.  When it is
necessary to bring out the demonstrative force of the determiner, a spatial
deictic "lhai" (here) or "lhon" (there) may be added to the noun phrase.
(This is similar to French or Irish.)

   ne lhai         "this, this one here (animate)"
   ne ikei lhai    "this dog, this dog over here"

   te lhon         "that, that one there (inanimate)"
   te halma lhon   "that book, that book over there"

There is also a pair of 'discourse deictics', which may be used to indicate a
previously-mentioned or subsequently-mentioned referent:

   ne ikei lhakmi   "that previously-mentioned dog"
                    "that dog that we were talking about"

   te halma lhaisi  "the following book"
                    "the book that I am just about to talk about"

Matt.

Reply