Pronouns in Euraisa and elsewhere

[Michael Noonan]

English 'they' is usually assumed to have been borrowed from an Old Norse
demonstrative and personal pronoun. 

In the Tibeto-Burman languages of which I have some knowledge, I'm not
aware of any instances of borrowing of personal pronouns, even among
languages which have borrowed extensively, including grammatical
affixes/clitics.

Mickey Noonan

On Tue, 7 Aug 2007, Florian Siegl wrote:

> Dear fellow typologists,
> 
> I'm looking for instances and references concerning personal pronoun 
> borrowing [equivalents of I, YOU, HE] in Eurasia. Available literature 
> concentrates on the Americas, South and South-East Asia but as far as 
> Eurasia is concerned, I have not yet found more instances than one clear 
> example (Ket --> Forest Enets). However, this example did not make it 
> into the general literature so far and I wonder if pronoun borrowing is 
> really so extraordinary in Eurasia and whether there are no other known 
> instances.
> 
> My second question concerns pronouns in a global context; Are there any 
> languages attested whose personal pronouns are derived from lexemes such 
> as body or any other possible body part and if yes, are these pronouns 
> considered to be etymologically old or are they more recent 
> grammaticalizations? Any reference welcome...
> 
> Best wishes,
> 
> Florian Siegl
> 

Michael Noonan			
Professor of Linguistics
Dept. of English		
University of Wisconsin		
Milwaukee, WI  53201		
USA				

Office:	  414-229-4539
Fax:	  414-229-2643
Messages: 414-229-4511
Webpage:  http://www.uwm.edu/~noonan