Persons & indices
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keeping track of who's who
This public article was written by [Deactivated User], and last updated on 19 Jan 2017, 02:50.
[comments] pklgrammarindicesclassifierspersons
1. A Tiny Grammar
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2. Persons & indices
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Pekalit has only three pronouns: ta, sjo, kje. These pronouns can take case markings (nominative, genitive, accusative, and dative) like any other noun in Pekalit. Otherwise, however, the only information contained in the pronoun itself is person; no pronouns are gendered, there is no trace of number, there is no indication of animacy or obviation.This can lead to confusion.
In order to keep track of who's who in a conversation or story, people and characters are assigned indices, which could be considered a form of classifier. An index is composed of a number and given the suffix -l to differentiate it from a numeral.
Indices always immediately follow the pronoun (or noun) they classify. After the initial classification, the index itself can take case stand alone as a pro-pronoun, and remains attached to that entity until it is reclassified. Index pro-pronouns, unlike other nouns or pronouns, take -l to indicate that they are in accusative case; other parts of speech have an unmarked accusative.
kjet kil¹
3Third person (person)
neither speaker nor addressee-NOMNominative (case)
TRANS subject, INTR argument CLClassifier
quantifies and/or replaces nouns¹
he¹ kalisj
say-TRTransitive (valency)
has two arguments
said kjet tjel²
3Third person (person)
neither speaker nor addressee-NOMNominative (case)
TRANS subject, INTR argument CLClassifier
quantifies and/or replaces nouns²
she² niyosj
force-TRTransitive (valency)
has two arguments
forced kil
ACCAccusative (case)
TRANS direct object; patient¹
him¹ masj
hit-TRTransitive (valency)
has two arguments
to hit tjen
ACCAccusative (case)
TRANS direct object; patient²
her²
(I've just added gender here so that the English sentence is a bit easier to parse.)
Indices can count up to six; sometimes this is pushed to seven, but at that point it is usually easier to simply return to using nouns, as the mental load can be rather heavy.
It is also worth noting that indices can be used on the second (or even first) person - to separate individuals from a group. Importantly, these are not assigned separately from third-person indices. (Zero⁰ index is used below to indicate a nonindexed entity.)
Multiple second persons
sjot kil¹
2Second person (person)
addressee (you)-NOMNominative (case)
TRANS subject, INTR argument CLClassifier
quantifies and/or replaces nouns¹
You¹ kalisj tan⁰
say-TRTransitive (valency)
has two arguments 1First person (person)
speaker, signer, etc; I-DATDative (case)
indirect object; recipient, beneficiary, location⁰
told me⁰ kit¹
NOMNominative (case)
TRANS subject, INTR argument¹
you¹ pjosj
want-TRTransitive (valency)
has two arguments
wanted sjo tjel²
2Second person (person)
addressee (you) CLClassifier
quantifies and/or replaces nouns²
you² pipeyah
play-ITUnknown code
to play kje njol³
3Third person (person)
neither speaker nor addressee CLClassifier
quantifies and/or replaces nouns³
with him³ iwa
with
and kje kepal⁴
3Third person (person)
neither speaker nor addressee CLClassifier
quantifies and/or replaces nouns⁴
her⁴
Assigning to nouns
tat kah
1First person (person)
speaker, signer, etc; I-NOMNominative (case)
TRANS subject, INTR argument⁰ think-ITUnknown code
I⁰ think kjet kil¹
3Third person (person)
neither speaker nor addressee-NOMNominative (case)
TRANS subject, INTR argument CLClassifier
quantifies and/or replaces nouns¹
he¹ motasj pjok
meet-TRTransitive (valency)
has two arguments want-AUXAuxilliary
wants to meet kjes tjel²
3Third person (person)
neither speaker nor addressee-GENGenitive (case)
possessive CLClassifier
quantifies and/or replaces nouns²
his² posa njol
friend CLClassifier
quantifies and/or replaces nouns³
friend³ a harekisj
and thank-TRTransitive (valency)
has two arguments
and thank njol³
ACCAccusative (case)
TRANS direct object; patient³
him³
Obviously it is not always necessary for the situation to be so convoluted in order to use indices; in any longer story or text it is normal to have a few indices used throughout.
There are a few other rules to the usage of indices:
- indices must be ascribed in numeric order (1, then 2, then 3, etc)
- indices can be reassigned at any point
- reassignment must commence with One again
- reassignment of One 'resets' all other indices to blank
- it is not required to assign indices to first or second persons, and they can be 'skipped'
- it is possible to assign an index to an entity that was already named and left un-indexed; this is common in speech but frowned upon in writing
Other notes:
- indices are assumed to retain all of the information from the original NP;
- e.g. the big yellow horses, condensed to kjel CLClassifier
quantifies and/or replaces nouns¹, are not just horses, but still big, and still yellow
- e.g. the big yellow horses, condensed to kjel CLClassifier
- it is not always necessary to classify all third persons, if there are not that many being spoken of, or if a bare noun would be preferred
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