Re: Person marking on nouns?

[Em '&str@nd r\o_Ut]:
> Estel Telcontar wrote:
> >
> >I got thinking recently about wat if there wer a language that markt
> >person on nouns, indicating the person-ness of who or what it referd
> >to.
> >
> -snip-
> >
> >Anyone know ov eny langwages, real or con, that do enything like this?
>
> According to a book I'm reading, Mordvin (a Uralic language or two spoken
> in Russia) nouns can take not only a person, but also a tense marking.
Lenmoct does this too:

Aci cugoc-ga pas.
['ajI w@'gVk.ga pa:s]
To-him life-PAST long.
He had a long life.

Unlike Mordvin, though, Lenmoct does
not have a zero copola.  Instead, it marks
nouns with a seperate "general" set of articles
that introduce things or indicate the nouns'
"existance."  In this example aci is a-ci,
or to-general.article.MASC.  *a'cgi cugoc-ga pas
would be ungramatical, since it has neither
a verb nor a general article and would probably
mean "to the long past life."

The noun tense thing is usually used in
conjunction with general articles (which,
not being verbs, cannot show the "time"
a sentence takes place) but also finds its
way into other contexts.

This is my second shameless plug for Lenmoct,
but so far no one has replied to the first [long] one,
my labor of love.  I was interested in seeing how
actual linguistic competents would classify
my verb system.

Jake