Re: Pronounlessly

Gustavo Eulalio wrote:
>
>         Are there languages that don't have personal pronouns?
It's been argued (altho I don't necessarily agree with it) that Japanese
doesn't have true personal pronouns.  Historically, their 1st and 2nd
person pronouns were nouns, e.g., boku (I) originally meant "[your]
servant", and there are even some situations where _boku_ may be used
for "you".

Interestingly, the 1st and 2nd person pronouns are all quite new in
Japanese, the 1st person pronouns all began as humble euphemisms
(considered polite not to directly speak of oneself), for example, boku,
servant, became a word for I, but over time they lost their humbleness,
and now _boku_ is not considered appropriate for speaking with
superiors.  Second-person pronouns originally began as a way of exalting
the person spoken to, but lost that exalting nature, being used more and
more, essentially being over-polite.

As a side-note, the 1st and 2nd person free pronouns in W. (as opposed
to the clitic pronouns) are descended form _wata'la_, soul, with
possessive clitics, thus _ta'lakwa_, -kwa = my, for "I", since shortened
to _ta'lkwa_.  The original pronouns are now only used for nominative
and genetive clitics, and 3rd person only for nominative, absolutive,
and genetive, with _i'squ'na_ (that one) for all other forms (with
gender prefixes, of course, e.g., _ti'squ'na_, she)

--
"It's bad manners to talk about ropes in the house of a man whose father
was hanged." - Irish proverb
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