Re: About persons

Matt Pearson wrote:

>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     ---     'eetaru     'etatou     'eta
>1()   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).

Polynesian languages (which probably descend from a "Proto Fiji-Polynesian"
stage) are similar, but have lost the "plural", replacing it with the
paucal/trial.  Maori, for ex.:

1   sg. ahau, au          dual incl. taua       pl. tatou
                                 du. excl. maua      pl. matou
2   koe                              korua              koutou
3   ia                                 raua                ratou

I'm not sure there is any good explanation for the loss of the initial of
'two', or of the -l- of  'three'.