Re: Is this realistic? (Papiamentu, Kele)

Rob wrote:

<<Very interesting ... Do we have a kind of universal here?!>>

What it actually reminds me of (to refresh, /lo/ coming before 1-3 sg. 
pronouns, but nothing else) is /i/ in Tok Pisin.   You need it after everything 
accept 1 & 2 person pronouns (sing. or plu.), if I'm remembering right.   So:

Mi/yu tok long yu/mi.   "I'm/you're talking to you/me."
Em i tok long yu.   "S/He's talking to you."
Dispela mari i tok long yu.   "This woman's talking to you."

/i/ derives from "he", of course, though now it acts almost like a predicate 
marker, accept only in certain instances.   It reminds me a lot of my 
step-dad's speech (first generation Armenian-American), where he won't say, "My buddy 
went to the boat show", but always, "My buddy, he went to the boat show".   As 
if (and this is by no means a linguistically correct explanation) a normal 
noun needs a pronoun to qualify it before a verb, or that the verb always needs 
some sort of pronoun.

In the Papiamentu example, then, it could be that the 1-3 sg. pronouns are 
thought of in the above way, and if there's a regular noun, or a plural pronoun, 
those are thought of as more noun-like and less pronoun-like, and so you 
can't put /lo/ in front of them.   Kind of like 1-3 sg. pronouns aren't thought of 
as actual noun phrases, but, rather, as part of the verb phrase.   If that 
were true, and you said that /lo/ always preceded the verb phrase, then this 
explanation might work.   But, of course, I haven't been taught Papiamentu by a 
personal teacher--don't think that slipped past me!   How'd you get to do 
that!?   Yahman!   Anyway, I have no linguistic terms to describe this phenomena 
that I've perceived.   I also don't know if the explanation I've given for the 
phenomena I've perceived is at all correct.   So, those are my thoughts.   (P.
S. The /bai/ switching in Tok Pisin is only with 1st and 2nd person pronouns, 
not 3rd--just like with /i/.)

<<It looks likely to me that stressless syllables got lost:
está / Stá > ta
logo ? lo>>

That makes sense (combined with the Portuguese explanation).

Also, re: Kele, I also have a Babel text up on langmaker.com.   It occurs to 
me that that's probably more helpful than my website, given its current state.

-David

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