third person singular

[Frances Karttunen]

----------
>From: Rmedinagarcia at aol.com
>To: <nahuat-l at server2.umt.edu>
>Subject: third person singular
>Date: Tue, Aug 22, 2000, 9:10 PM
>

> Hello,
>      This is my first posting.  I am trying to learn Nahuatl from
> Horcasita's Nahuatl Practico.  How do you differentiate gender for the
> third person singular: yehuatl? Is it implied that the gender is always male?
>                           Ricardo

Better yet!  There is no grammatical distinction between masculine and
feminine.  If it's REALLY important, one must say so.  Otherwise, Nahuatl
prvides a gender-free context.


There ARE distinctions made grammatically between human and nonhuman (te:-
versus tla-) and animate versus inanimate (only animate entities--as Nahuas
perceive them, sometimes differently than we might--have distinct plural
forms).

As for third-person singular subject and object, they are determinable as
he/him, she/her, or it only by external context.  For plural, English is
more like Nahuatl than Spanish is: just they/them.