The
deictic pronominal system categorizes spatial distance
into speaker- proximate, listener-proximate and interlocutor-remote
pigeonholes. Listener-proximate is further divided into
absolutely listener-proximate and relatively listener-proximate
pronouns and interlocutor-remote into proximate and distant
pronouns the later being not too common. Each of these
five classes has singular, dual and plural numbers. Gender
is not marked in the plural marked -khru i.e.
the plural pronouns marked by -khru are epicene,
and native speaker intuition is surprisingly divided over
the marking of gender in the dual; this variability in
native-speaker intuition is indicated by a parenthesized
question mark. Two question marks in parenthesis, on the
other hand, would indicate unanimity of native-speaker
intuition about the in felicitousness of the construction.
Logically, of course, gender cannot be marked in the dual
either by the human gender markers -na, -o
and -püi, because these mark singular number
as we saw in 3.3.2. Apart from the gender markers (with
the caveat entered above), human person, diminutive markers,
and various other forms-case markers, postpositions and
contentives- can be added to these demonstrative bases
resulting in an incredibly productive set of demonstrative
forms. Most of them are adverbial in character, and express
local semantic functions.
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