Re: Mixed person plurals

John Vertical wrote:

>Hi all,
>
>I've been thinking about the plurals of personal (and relative) pronouns
>lately...
>For background information, my conlang has 4 different persons. I think the
>exact difference between 3rd and 4th persons varies between languages - I'm
>using the 3rd for people who are in the discussion but who are not the
>recipient of the message, and 4th for any extrenal beings, regardless of
>their sentience.
>
>So, now I'm faced with the problem of mixed person plurals. It seems to me
>that NONE of the generic plurals are pure; eg the generic "2nd person
>plural" may well include also people who would be 3rd or 4th person, if
>individually referred to.
>I could go for a very finely distinctive system, by using different words
>for ALL the plural types - 13 different ones are possible: 1+2, 1+3, 1+4,
>1+2+3, 1+2+4, 1+3+4, 1+2+3+4, 2, 2+3, 2+4, 2+3+4, 3, 3+4, 4 - but a system
>this wide does not seem sensible. However, with regards to this, I do want
>to distinguish more than just the generic three or four.
>
>The same problem applies to relative pronouns. I'm not sure of the
>terminology used for their classification, but it seems to me that the
>singular ones in eg. English correspond roughly with my 2nd, 3rd and 4th
>persons. I have two rel. pron. sets, one for abstracts and one for concrete
>objects (with the 4th concrete merged with the 4th person), and the 7 later
>classes of plurals are again possible in both series here.
>Not to mention plurals mixing pronouns from different series altogether
>(like 1st person with 4th abstract), but those seem generally a little too
>unuseful. A few variants of "all" and a few variants of "person +
>possessions" should be enough for those.
>
>The question is: what plural types do you think would be the most likely to
>merge? I'm fairly sure that at least the 1+2+4 type is of too little use to
>warrant a word on its own. Some types might exist only for certain numbers
>(obviously the mixed plurals can have no singular, and eg 1+2 might only
>have a dual) ... other restrictions might be possible too.
Personnaly, to reduce the number I'd not keep the distinction between 3rd
and 4th person when there are 1st and 2nd person implied. So there would
have:

1+2
1+2+3, 1+2+4, or 1+2+3+4
1+3, 1+4, or 1+3+4
2
2+3, 2+4, or 2+3+4
3
4
3+4

And then you have only 8 different plural pronouns, but maybe you loose
sensibility for what you wanted

So, you may create all the 13 pronouns but agglutinatively

1st = a
2nd = v/ve
3rd = i/j
4th = u
plur = l/le
dual = k/ke

singular forms
1   a
2   ve
3   i
4   u

dual forms
1+2   kav
1+3   kai
1+4   kau
2   kev
2+3   kevi
2+4   kevu
3   ki
3+4   kju
4   ku

plural forms
1    la
1+2    lav
1+3    lai
1+4    lau
1+2+3    lavi
1+2+4    lavu
1+2+3+4    lavju
2    lev
2+3    levi
2+4    levu
2+3+4   levju
3   li
3+4   lju
4   lu

or something similar with the "l" and "k" at the end or with different
orders in the word like 1-2-4-3 or 2-3-4-1 instead of the 1-2-3-4 I used or
not always the same order or without any dual

>Oh, and any ANADEWism changes here? What's the most different personal
>pronouns (disregarding gender) distinguished in a natlang?
I'd like to know this too but I can't help for this

- Max