Re: demonstratives

On Tue, 20 Feb 2001, Andreas Johansson wrote:

> 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!
>
> 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".
Yeah, I find myself wanting to do perverse things like that too, though
usually in areas other than conlanging.  I know *I* have a memory like a
sieve (I screwed up the neuter nominative/accusative plural in Latin on
two quizzes in a row because I got hung up on masculine/feminine
3rd-declension noun endings...stupid me) so I want any of my conlangs to
have big chunks of regularity.

> 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?
Indeed.  =^)

YHL