inclusive/exclusive

ROOD DAVID S rood at spot.Colorado.EDU
Wed Dec 14 00:04:31 UTC 2005


Rory, I would be happy to hear from more speakers on this issue, but my
experience is exactly as you put it at the end of your message: 'She and I
went' would have to be unyaNpi.

David

David S. Rood
Dept. of Linguistics
Univ. of Colorado
295 UCB
Boulder, CO 80309-0295
USA
rood at colorado.edu

On Tue, 13 Dec 2005, Rory M Larson wrote:

> > The point is that unyanpi is neither exclusive nor inclusive -- it is
> > 'I and others'.  On the other hand, unye 'you and I went' could only be
> > used to remind someone of something the two of you had done at some
> point;
> > it has to be limited to two people, and only the speaker and a single
> > addressee are available.  It's most common as an imperative -- unyin
> > kte heci 'let's go', said to one person.
>
> I wonder how solid this is?  'WE', in English and Siouan, basically means
> 'myself plus somebody else'.  In Siouan, I prefer to think of it as a
> separate 'person' which, like 'you' and '3rd person', can be pluralized or
> not.  This is certainly what the grammar seems to indicate.  WE-singular is
> myself plus one other person, which might be you or him/her; and WE-plural
> is myself plus more than one other person, which might be any mixture.
>
> Granting that 'you and I' is the most common, and perhaps prototypical,
> usage of uNye, the real test is in how fluent speakers would translate
> 'S/he and I went'.  Is it well-established, tested against numerous Dakotan
> speakers, that 's/he and I went' is regularly translated as uNyaNpi rather
> than as uNye?
>
> Rory
>



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