3.1.1.1.1.
There is no gender distinction in the first and second person pronouns,
but there is a three-fold distinction of gender in the third person
pronouns: human, animate and inanimate. There is no distinction of
masculine and feminine in the human and animate categories. It must
be noted that the members of human and animate categories are not
the conventional ones. The human pronoun bc
refers to human beings, parts of human body, things pertinent to human
beings like his name etc., and the tree and the parts of the tree.
The animate pronoun m is used for referring to animals, birds, gods, angels, evil
spirits etc., and the inanimate pronoun k is used for referring to all the conventional inanimate objects
like tree, fan , frying pan, hailstones, etc. |
| The
pronouns are as follows: |
|
|
Singular
|
Plural
|
|
I person
|
a
|
cµ
|
|
III person
|
nµ
|
n-rk
|
|
III person
|
|
|
|
human
|
b
|
b-rk
|
|
animate
|
m
|
m-rk
|
|
inanimate
|
k
|
k-rk
|
|
|
3.1.1.1.2.
The first person pronouns a ‘I’ and  µ
‘We’ have two allophones each viz., aN, a- and , µ,
i-
respectively. The allomorph a- of the first person singular
pronoun occurs before the accusative and dative morpheme Ön(e.g., a-n ‘me, to me’) and the genitive and the ablative
morpheme Öni
(e.g., a-ni ‘of me, from me’). It also occurs as pronominal
prefix before all the substantives except those beginning with h
(e.g., aÖma
‘my mother’, a-pha ‘my father’ but aÖhik ‘my
wife’). The allomorph ciÖof
first person plural occurs before the genitive marker
Öni
(e.g., i-ni
‘of us’) while µ occurs with other case markers. The phonologically conditioned
morphonemic variations of other pronouns were discussed in Chapter
2. The second and third person pronouns are represented with the substract
symbol V for the varying vowel as nV-, bV- mV-
and kV-, which are derived from nµ,
b,
m
and k respectively. |
| 3.1.1.2.
Demonstrative Pronouns: The demonstrative pronominal adjectives in
Kokborok are the proximate i ‘this’ and romote u
‘that’. There are two more demonstrative pronominal adjectives
‘this and a ‘that’ which
refer to things not in the physical plane but in the mental plane.
‘this’ is used when referring to things which are psychologically
close to the speaker and a ‘that ‘ when referring
to things which are psychologically removed from the speaker. The
pronominal adjective precedes the noun. Like any adjective it is not
declined for the number and gender of the noun. |
| Examples: |
|
|
|
kha
