3rd person pronouns
From: | Chris Bates <christopher.bates@...> |
Date: | Wednesday, February 4, 2004, 15:31 |
Since I'm considering doing it, are there any natlangs where the verb
person marking, pronouns etc mark an animate/inanimate distinction but
not a masc/fem distinction? I'm not sure if I'd count languages like
swahili, since while there are a set of agreements used for people,
regardless of which noun class they actually fall into (eg asikari
a-na-toka soldier he/she-present-come "the/a soldier comes/is coming"
even though asikari doesn't fall into the m/wa person class which a- is
usually the agreement marker for) Sorry if the example is wrong, haven't
practiced in ages and I haven't got very far yet... but anyway, the
point I was making was swahili almost does it, but swahili has a large
number of noun classes/genders, whereas I was thinking of a language
which only divided objects into animate and inanimate.