Re: Re : Question on personal inflections

Nik Taylor wrote:
>  Question: Is it reasonable to have a language whose verbs inflect for
>  number and animacy, but NOT for person?  In my current incarnation of
>  Eastern, verbs inflect for voice, mood (both as prefixes) and for
>  singular-animate, singular-inanimate, dual-animate, dual-inanimate,
>  plural-animate, and plural-inanimate.  Is this a reasonable =
distinction
>  to make?  My thought is that nouns replaced pronouns ("my soul" for =
"I",
>  etc.; analogous to the origin of free pronouns in W.), which =
naturally
>  would take third person agreement, and thus first and second persons
>  were lost.
If I'm not mistaken, some (all?) (a few?) Polynesian languages have=20
some irregular verbs that inflect for number only.

But anyways, if you ask me, I don't think its unreasonable.

-kristian- 8)