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Re: Marking nouns with person?

From:Thomas Wier <trwier@...>
Date:Friday, September 2, 2005, 7:10
Kate Sherwood wrote:
> I think that Nahuatl marks person on nouns similarly: third person is > zero, and second and third person are marked. The noun and verb have > to agree in person. I think that a noun with a person marker would be > a complete sentence meaning "I am/You are/He is .... ", rather than a > possessive ("My/Your/His"). > > Unfortunately, I don't own the Nahuatl grammar I read this in, so I > can't be more detailed. And I might be a little off since it's been > awhile. =)
I've argued that these subject markers in Nahuatl -- at least in modern spoken Nahuatl -- are actually clitics, and therefore it's inappropriate to say that they are marking person on the noun. Launey, to be sure, thinks otherwise, but I think most linguists would think that his omnipredicativity hypothesis is wrong. ========================================================================= Thomas Wier "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally, Dept. of Linguistics because our secret police don't get it right University of Chicago half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of 1010 E. 59th Street Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter. Chicago, IL 60637

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