Re: Combined Pronouns

In a message dated 11/7/01 10:15:18 AM, kljensen@IMAGE.DK writes:

>H. S. Teoh wrote:
>> In Malay, we have two 2nd person plurals, one which includes the listener,
>> and one which includes only the speaker and the people with him:
>>
>> kita    - "we", as in, "all of us", including the listener.
>> kami    - "we", as in, "me and my folks", excluding the listener.
>
>In Tagalog, this is tayo and kami respectively.
>
>> I kinda borrowed and adapted this idea in my conlang: instead of 2nd
>and
>> 3rd person pronouns, I have the "intimate" and "distant" pronouns, with
>> the "intimate" pronouns covering the speaker and all those he considers
>> "close" to him, or on his side; and the "distant" pronouns referring
>to
>> the "outsiders", or those whom he doesn't consider to be on his side.
>> (I've posted some examples of this before; I won't bother posting more
>> here unless people are interested :-)
>
>This is reminiscent of a secret language for men among a certain
>aboriginal tribe in north Australia I read about ages ago. I forget
>what it is called. It is reputed to have only the pronouns
>equivalent to "ego" and "non-ego". It'd be interesting to use in a
>conlang, though I never really could get it to work in any practical
>manner.
>
>-kristian- 8)
Kar Marinam has a ego/non-ego division. Then it goes into animate/inanimate,
general/specific, singular/plural, and casual/respectful. But not all
combinations occur - so you end up with only 11 pronouns. That's not
including the cases, of course (possibly 11 cases for animate, 7 for
inanimate).

Josh Roth
http://members.aol.com/fuscian/eloshtan.html