Re: Igassik pronouns

Roger Mills wrote:

>Marcus Smith wrote:
>
> >Here is the pronoun system for Igassik.
> >
> >1st
> >                 Singular                Plural
> >Nominative      ni              Ti
> >Accusative      es              suip
> >
> >2nd
> >                 Singular                Plural
> >Nominative      mo              mas
> >Accusative      taev            kol
> >
>(snip)
>Interesting system.  Looking at it from a Southeast Asian POV, I'm struck by
>the lack of distinctions in 1st and 2nd person, compared to the gradations
>seen in 3rd pers.  In SEA it would be a great breach of etiquette to use
>ni/mo (equivalents) when speaking to a leader/elder etc., the same as to an
>"animal".  Possibly the 3d person forms can be used in direct address?
The system doesn't really encode social distinctions like the SEA languages
do, but rather the speakers level of respect for or general attituted
toward that person in a given context.

Example: Say I'm telling you about my wife's father. Since he is an in-law,
I would use the formal pronouns krae and sor. I start telling you about
what he was like when my wife was a child (as she had related it to me). In
these cases, I slip into her point-of-view, and use the familiar pronouns
keom and Doy (because that's what she would have used). He was an alcoholic
and abused his wife and children, so when I talk about this from my own
perspective, he gets the proximate/distal category depending on his
physical and metaphorical distance at the moment: now and he or miu and
Del. I don't go all the way to Animal because he has since reformed so is
still worthy of some respect. Thus, when I talk about him in current
contexts, I use the formal again. If he never did reform, then I could
refer to him with the Animal forms hiu and ew.

These are not the kinds of distinctions one would necessarily want to make
when talking directly to someone. Hence, there is only a single set for
first and second persons.


===============================
Marcus Smith
AIM:  Anaakoot
"When you lose a language, it's like
dropping a bomb on a museum."
   -- Kenneth Hale
===============================