Re: About persons

The Gray Wizard wrote:

> > From: John Cowan
> >
> > There is a natlang, the name of which I forget, which has a
> > very neat scheme of pronouns:
> >
> >                           singular    dual                plural
> > speaker and listener     ---         thou and I          we (inclusive)
> > speaker, not listener    I           he/she/it and I     we (exclusive)
> > listener, not speaker    thou        he/she/it and thou  you
> > neither one              he/she/it   they two            they
>
> I love it.  Does anyone know what natlang this is?
Dirk already mentioned Shoshone.  Fijian is also like this, but even more
complicated, since it distinguishes four numbers--singular, dual, paucal (a
few), and plural.  Here's the paradigm for the Boumaa dialect of Fijian:


        sg      du          pc          pl

1+2     ---     'eetaru     'etatou     'eta
1(+3)   yau     'eirau      'eitou      'eimami
2       i'o     'emundrau   'emundou    'emunuu
3       'ea     (i)rau      (i)ratou    (i)ra

There's a fair bit of morphological transparency here, though the forms are
not as regular as in Shoshone.  The elements /'e/ and /i~y/ are probably
determiners of some sort, while /ta/ would seem to be the first person
inclusive morpheme, /mu(n)/ the second plural morpheme, and /ra/ the third
plural morpheme.  The dual element /rau~ru/ is clearly from the
Proto-Austronesian root for "two" (/rua/ in Malagasy), while the paucal
element /tou/ is from the Proto-Austronesian root for "three" (/telu/ in
Malagasy).

Matt.