Re: THEORY: Any rules broken?
From: | David Peterson <thatbluecat@...> |
Date: | Monday, February 2, 2004, 22:51 |
Many of the world's languages don't have a third person pronoun of any kind.
My language Zhyler doesn't have a third person pronoun or marking. So...
mat-um = "I see"
mat-al = "you see"
mat-le-m = "I see you"
mat-ma-l = "I see you"
mat = "S/he/it sees (him/her/it)" and thus...
mat-um = "I see (him/her/it)"
mat-al = "you see (him/her/it)"
There are also pronouns though. The paradigm is simple: /ma/ = "I"; /li/ =
"you"; /maja/ = "we"; /lije/ = "you (plu.)". There's no equivalent for the
third person. Since this is a prodrop language, though, there's no problem.
If there's ever a possibility for confusion, you just repeat the noun.
With your language, I hesitantly say that it would be strange if you could
prefix any noun to a verb and it would be understood to be the agent. Most
languages that allow noun incorporation have the noun performing some other sort
of function in the sentence, and then the resulting verb can be 1st, 2nd or
3rd person. Also, it would be *VERY* strange if you didn't have a 3rd person
pronoun, but *did* have a 4th person. That just wouldn't make sense.
-David