Fijian Pronouns (was: Re: Pronoun systems, Texperanto, ANADEW (was:Re: Mixed person plurals))

Note: forwarded message attached.
Date:Wed, 24 Aug 2005 15:15:19 -0700 (PDT)From:"Tom Chappell" <tomhchappell@...> Add to
Address BookSubject:Fijian Pronouns (was: Re: Pronoun systems, Texperanto,
ANADEW (was:Re: Mixed person plurals))To:"Rex May" <rmay@...> [input] [input]
[input] [input] On page 281 of "Person" Anna Siewierska says "For instance,
whereas Standard Fijian has over 130 person forms, Plantation pidgin Fijian
employs only 6." (She uses "person forms" instead of "pronouns".)

Page 281 is the very last page of text-body before the appendices, references, and indices.
It is in section 7.3.2 "Loss of Person Agreement" of subchapter 7.3
"Language-Externally Driven Changes in Person Marking" of chapter 7 "Person
Forms in a Diachronic Perspective".

For the above quote, she refers to Chapter 10 of the 1990 work "Pronouns and
People: the Linguistic Construction of Social and Personal Identity" by Peter
Muhlhausler and Rom Harre, and to pages 388-389 of the 2000 work "Classifiers"
by Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald from the Oxford Studies in Typology and Linguistic
Theory.

Do you think the list-as-a-group might like to hear of this?

Rex May <rmay@...> wrote:


On Aug 18, 2005, at 4:27 PM, tomhchappell wrote:

[snnip]

> 6) I'd have to look up about Fijian. The Fijians seem to find it
> useful and not a PITA.
> To some degree, how useful and how much of a PITA a certain feature
> of a language is, is best judged by a consensus of (many) L2-speakers.
Exactly.

>
> As an example, Swahili, which is a Bantu language, is not tonal,
> though most Bantu languages are tonal; and Swahili has notably
> fewer "genders" (noun-classes is what Africanists call them) than
> other Bantu languages, especially for plurals; it especially has
> fewer "open" (or productive?) noun-classes than other Bantu languages.
>
> These simplifications are due to Swahili's wide-spread use as an L2
> among L1-speakers of other Bantu languages; in fact, there are many
> more L2-Swahili speakers than L1-Swahili speakers; Swahili is a
> rather minor L1-language compared to other Bantu L1-languages. Yet,
> these simplifications, even those that amount to dropping certain
> Bantu features, come from people who L1-speak Bantu languages.
>[snip]

__________________________________________________
From:"Rex May" <rmay@...> Add to Address BookSubject:Re: Pronoun systems, Texperanto,
ANADEW (was:Re: Mixed person plurals)Date:Fri, 19 Aug 2005 10:30:08
-0600To:"tomhchappell" <tomhchappell@...> [input] [input] [input] [input]

On Aug 18, 2005, at 4:27 PM, tomhchappell wrote:> Hi, Rex.> Thanks for your post;
I really enjoyed it.> I only have a few things to say at the moment, and I
think they would> interest you more than the rest of the list, so this is
going> directly to you.>> 1) If we want to know what Corbett thinks about the
gender of the> Esperanto/Lojban "intial"-type anaphors, the thing to do might
be to> ask Corbett. (This may be obvious to anyone who thinks more clearly>
than I do.) Since there are now L1-speakers of Esperanto, I think> this
qualifies as a sci.lang type question, and he might not feel he> was playing
(conlanging) instead of working if he took the time to> answer such a
question.Sure. All I know about the guy I read in your post.>> 2) What's POS
stand for in the below?Part Of Speech.>> 3) Is there a cross-linguistically
complete(ish) table of all> (or most) correlatives in all (or most) natlangs
anywhere?Not that I know of.>> 4) How about this for a pair of subgenders !
 of
 Human?> a) people who use "gender" for "sex"> b) people who carefully
distinguish "gender" from "sex".> ("There are two kinds of people in the world;
on the one hand people> who are constantly thinking there are two kinds of
people in the> world, and on the other hand everyone else.")>> 5) Anna
Siewierska (in "Person") says (in effect) culturally-> significant and favorite
animals are "honorary" people, in> Human/Nonhuman gender systems. ISTR
Corbett's "Gender" said> something similar (iirc).Sure. Personification. In my
dialect it's used a lot.>> 6) I'd have to look up about Fijian. The Fijians
seem to find it> useful and not a PITA.> To some degree, how useful and how
much of a PITA a certain feature> of a language is, is best judged by a
consensus of (many) L2-speakers.Exactly.>> As an example, Swahili, which is a
Bantu language, is not tonal,> though most Bantu languages are tonal; and
Swahili has notably> fewer "genders" (noun-classes is what Africanists call
them) !
 than>
 other Bantu languages, especially for plurals; it especially has> fewer "open"
(or productive?) noun-classes than other Bantu languages.>> These
simplifications are due to Swahili's wide-spread use as an L2> among
L1-speakers of other Bantu languages; in fact, there are many> more L2-Swahili
speakers than L1-Swahili speakers; Swahili is a> rather minor L1-language
compared to other Bantu L1-languages. Yet,> these simplifications, even those
that amount to dropping certain> Bantu features, come from people who L1-speak
Bantu languages.>> 7) Thanks for writing. I enjoyed reading this.> I plan to
read up some more on Texperanto and its world, too.>And do feel free to make
suggestions. The criteria are that Texperanto is what Z would have invented,
had he immigrated to the Republic of Texas and had become rather more
acquainted with English, Spanish, and Haitian. And other features of the
current language, like letter-anaphora, are considered to be later developments
i!
 n the
 language.  I want it to end up being THE perfect reform of Eo.-rx







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