pincho a-ocho ‘male child, boy’ male child arlocho a-ocho ‘female child, girl’ female child

In personal pronouns, two way distinction of gender viz., human and non-human or neuter and non-neuter are made. From this a three-way

ala ‘he, she’ alatum ‘they (hum.)’ alali   alalitum   la he, she, it’ latum ‘they (Human, Animate)’   lahuy ‘they (neuter)’

pincho a-ocho ‘male child, boy’ male child arlocho a-ocho ‘female child, girl’ female child

In personal pronouns, two way distinction of gender viz., human and non-human or neuter and non-neuter are made. From this a three-way

ala ‘he, she’ alatum ‘they (hum.)’ alali   alalitum   la he, she, it’ latum ‘they (Human, Animate)’   lahuy ‘they (neuter)’

distinction can be finally made out - human, animate and inanimate.

The last type of human nouns mark gender by suffixation.

char-bura ‘old man’ char-pi ‘old woman’ megve-pi ‘blind woman’ kekok-pi ‘lame woman’

In animate nouns, masculine gender is marked with -lo or alo and feminine with -pi or api.Unlike human nouns in which the gender is marked obligatorily, the animate nouns are marked for gender only when it is to be specified.

The allomorphs of the gender markers are phonologically, conditioned. -lo and -pi areadded to nouns ending in a vowel and alo and api to nouns ending in a consonant. The allomorphs -lo and -pi are part of the nouns as there is no pause in between whereas the allomorphs alo and api are distinct words as there is pause in between these and the noun.

1)  bi ‘goat’ bilo  ‘male goat’ bipi ‘female goa’ bipo  ‘male goat’ 2)  Vo ‘bird, chicken’ Volo ‘male bird, cock’ Vopi  ‘female bird, hen’ 3)  cayno ‘cow, bull’ cayno alo ‘bull’ cayno api ‘cow’

-po is also used for masculine in the noun bi ‘goat’. Excluding this noun, human and animate nouns have distinct markers for masculine. viz., -po and -lo or alo respectively.