Grammatical Categories
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Pronouns exhibit the grammatical categories such as person, number,
gender and case as follows:
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Person: There are three persons denoted by the pronouns. First person
pronouns mark the speaker, when the hearer and / or the other persons
included then the first person plural is used.
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Second person marks the person spoken to or addressed and here the
person addressed is present.
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Third person marks the person spoken about, thus all the nouns also
fall in the third person.
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Number: Besides the distinction of person, all the pronouns mark the
distinction of two numbers : singular and plural.
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Case : In the language various case relationships are marked by the use
of various postpositions which occur after the oblique forms (see 3.1.3.
for details). In certain pronouns like first person and second person,
case marking postpositions are suffixed tightly. So they are listed in
direct, regative, accusative and genitive. All other pronouns except
indefinite human have two inflected case forms direct and oblique.
Indefinite human pronouns are also inflected for vacative.
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Gender: All the third person pronouns except (the relative and
interrogative) mark the distinction of gender in its direct singular form.
Besides indefinite human pronouns have two forms one for masculine
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gender and another for feminine gender inflecting like nouns/gero/ ‘boy’
and /geri/ ‘girl’ respectively.
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All the third person pronouns except (indefinite human pronouns) also
function as adjectival and show the deictic relation.
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Following are the Pronoun Forms
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‘I’
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Direct
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hũ
|
hm
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Accusative |
mInna
|
hma
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{mas.d.pl.
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mera
|
màra
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{mas.obl.sg.
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mera |
màra
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{mas.obl.pl.
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mera
|
màra
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{mas.d.sg.
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mero
|
màro
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Genitive
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{fem.d.sg.
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meri
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màri
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{fem.d.pl.
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meri
|
màrà
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{fem.obl.sg.
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meri
|
màri
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{fem.obl.pl.
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merIyã
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màrIyã
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Examples showing the use of first person pronouns.
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hũ
|
y
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km
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krũ
go/
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krũ
gi |
‘I
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(male/ female)
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shall
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do
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this
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work’
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1
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2 |
3 |
4(mas.) |
5(fem.) |
1 |
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4 |
5 |
2 |
3 |
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hm
|
kr
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jãga/
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jãgĩ
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‘We
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(male/female)
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shall
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go
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home’
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1
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2 |
3 |
4 |
1 |
3 4 |
3 |
4 |
2 |
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m
|
y
|
km
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kIyo
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‘I
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did
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this
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work’
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1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
1 |
4 |
2 |
3 |
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