| compare: |
| i muk dibi |
‘give me this’ |
| o muk dibi |
‘give me that’ |
| tat jabi |
‘go there’ |
| itu doni |
‘it (is) beautiful’ |
| tay doni |
‘he/she (is) beautiful’ |
|
The proximate demonstrative pronoun itu ‘this specific’ has another form
heytu. The selection of either of these forms is dependent on the size of
the object which is being referred to, for e.g.
|
| /itu/ |
mos girise
itu girise
gas katise
itu katise |
‘the fish fell’
‘it fell’
‘the grass was cut’
‘it was cut’
|
| /heytu/ |
gor girise
heytu girise
guru girise
heytu girise |
‘the house fell’
‘if fell’
‘the cow fell’
‘it fell’ |
|
Since the terms like big/small etc. are relative ones without having any
clear line of demarcation, the selection of one form or the other would be
mainly subjective. This division into small/big is not available with the
obviate demonstrative pronoun.
|
Definite and indefinite pronouns:
|
There are no clear distinction between definite and indefinite pronouns.
The same form, viz., sob could be used for both ‘all’ and ‘everything’, as
in:
|
| moykhan sob jayse |
‘all of us went’ |
| sobkhan tat jayse |
‘every one went there’ |
| sob horayse |
‘everything is lost’ |
| sobkhanbi |
‘all of them also’ |
|
may be, the second and the third sentence could be translated
respectively as : ‘all went there’ and ‘lost all things’. Another example of
the use of the indefinite pronoun is:
|
khali konuba jayse ‘hardly any one went’
|
Partitive pronouns:
|
Portative pronouns are not regularly used. Even when used, the
phrases like ‘neither.....nor’ ‘either....or’ found in English have no
parallel in this language. The selection of a particular form and the place
of the negative determines whether the sentence as a whole has a negative or
affirmative sentence, as an:
|
tay n hole tay bohini jabo |
‘he or
his sister will go’ |
| tay ru tay bohini njabo |
‘neither he nor his sister will go’ |
|
(lit. he and his sister not go will) |
|
1 2 3 4
5 6 7 |
|
Instead of ru, some also use nhole,
as in
|
| tay nhole tar bohini njabo |
‘neither he nor hsi sister will go’ |
| 1 2
3 4 5
6 |
|
|
(lit. he or his sister not go will) |
|
1 2 3 4
5 6 7 |
|
The latter expression, however, is not accepted for this grammar.
|
The different forms of the personal pronouns are given in a tabular form.
|
| |
|
Personal
pronouns |
Reflexive
pronouns |
| 1st person |
sg. |
moy |
moyhi |
| |
pl. |
moykh an |
moykhanhi |
| 2nd person |
sg. |
puni |
punihi |
| |
pl. |
punikhan |
punikhanhi |
3rd person
(only human
being class) |
sg. |
tay2 |
tayhi |
| |
pl. |
taykhan |
taykhanhi |
| |
|
|
|
|
The definition, the morphological construction, sub-classification, etc.
of the pronouns were discussed in this section. The next section discusses
the system of numeral available in this language.
|
|
1The possessive pronouns (genitive case) in this
languages are not inflected to indicate the case relation. Therefore their
phonemic shape is identical with that of the pronouns in the nominative
case.
2tay ‘he/she’ and tayk an ‘they (human beings)’.
The demonstrative pronouns substitute the III person non-human being class of
nouns.
|
