Re: basic morphemes of a loglang

Paul Bennett wrote:
> The different Japanese counting words? I don't know the technical term (nor
> enough Japanese to quote them), but they're a gender system if ever I saw
> one
They're not gender, they're classifier.  The term is Counter, and
they're *only* used with numbers.

> and wa/ga/etc mark subject and so forth in non-gender ways
?  They're cases, nothing more.

> And pronouns? Does Japanese even have "real" pronouns?
What do you mean by "real" pronouns?  Pronouns that work the same way as
in the IE languages, such that they cannot be etymologically traced back
to nouns (altho, even there, you have things like "Usted" < Vuestra
merced), and that have their own inflections?  If so, no.  But, if you
mean words that are used like IE pronouns, such that a given word refers
to the speaker, and can only mean the speaker, then yes, several:

First person: Watashi, Atashi, Boku, Ore, Washi (mostly only by older
speakers)
Second person: Anata, kimi, kisama, omae
Third person: Kare, kanojo

Of course, nouns are frequently used as "pseudo-pronouns", such that
_sensei_ (teacher) can mean "I" if used by a teacher, "you" if used by a
student adressing a teacher, "he/she" if used to refer to said teacher.

--
"There's no such thing as 'cool'.  Everyone's just a big dork or nerd,
you just have to find people who are dorky the same way you are." -
overheard
ICQ: 18656696
AIM Screen-Name: NikTaylor42

Reply