Re: Combined Pronouns

Hi!

Adam Walker <dreamertwo@...> writes:
> >From: Muke Tever <alrivera@...>
> >Date: Wed, 7 Nov 2001 08:08:24 -0500
> >
> >I always wanted to put in an "exclusive you" for "present company excepted"
> >situations.  (i.e., 'you as a group, but not you as an individual')... but
> >that'd be a little much, I think.
> >
> >     *Muke!
>
> A little much?  Nah, I love it.  In fact, it sounds just like the sort of
> word the Lrahran speakers would embrace.  Their pronoun system is already
> weird enough that you-ex would fit right in!  After all, they *have* I-ex.
Yeah, I like a lot of pronouns, too.

I once thought about a totally regular system for this, but did not
implement it in my current conlang, because it is not really basic
(the design goal of that language).  However, it works like this.

Imagine a triangle whose hooks are assigned the three main persons,
all exclusive.  The edges between two hooks are assigned the inclusive
person pronouns for the participating two hooks' persons and in the
middle, there is an all-inclusive pronoun.  Graphically:


    1st-ex        1st+2nd        2nd-ex

        1st+3rd     all     2nd+3rd

                  3rd-ex


1st-ex  : me and only me
2nd-ex  : you and only you
3rd-ex  : he, she, it, they, and only them
1st-2nd : we, i.e., you and me, but not the person talked about
1st-3rd : we, i.e., him/her/it/them and me, but not you
2nd-3rd : you and him/her/it/them, but not me
all     : we, i.e., me, you and him/her/it/them.  All of us.

The special niceness of this system would have been reflected by the
Tyl-Sjok vowel system, which has vowels in exactly those positions as
in the above triangle (note: frontness-backness is reversed compared
to usual conventions):

    back                    front

    /jM/        /j1/        /ji/

        /jO/    /j3/    /jE/

                /ja/

The vowels provide for nice jokes, I think: imaging using diphthongs
etc. :-)

E.g.: `I love y.....him!' = `Ju jet jjjjjjjja.'

Further, the fronted vowel in /ji/ can be imagined as `away from me',
thus `you', while /jM/ is close to myself, thus `me'.

(The only flaw would be that `ji' would be reduced to `i' by the
current phonotactics, but that's not really too bad.)

Of course, you might wish to complicate the situation by
distinguishing pronouns by number and gender. :-)

**Henrik