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Re: Question about anaphora

From:Doug Dee <amateurlinguist@...>
Date:Saturday, May 31, 2003, 20:26
In a message dated 5/30/2003 6:13:36 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
stoiberh@INODE.AT writes:


>Given that my conlang has no grammatical gender, what are the options for >realizing a helpful system of anaphora? I bet that there is more than one
way
>and I simply want to get to know a few before I make my ultimate decision >for my own conlang-baby.
Are you familiar with the proximate/obviative distinction found in some North American languages? I'm sure someone here can explain it better than I can, but essentially in any sentence (or longer stretch of discourse, depending on the language), one noun is "proximate" (and morphologically unmarked) and the others carry an "obviative" suffix. You can then have pronouns (or verb endings) that indicate whether the antecedent (or subject) was proximate or obviative. Doug