Posting from Martin Haase

[Johan van der Auwera]

Dear Edith and fellow lingtyps,
Enrique is right in drawing your attention to Basque. I have treated the

question of the deictic plural in Basque in one of my contribution to
the
Handbook of Typology ("local deixis"). Here is some additional
information
to Enrique's point.
At 09:15 22.08.01 -0500, Enrique L. Palancar Vizcaya wrote:
>As for Basque, there is the Plural suffix "-ok" which contrasts with
the
>definite plural "-ek (ERG)" and "-ak" (ABS) in that it implies an
>inclusivity of the speaker and hearer as members of the group referred
by
>the plural noun:

Plural forms containing _-o-_ imply proximal deixis, not necessarily the

inclusion of the speaker. Usually, proximal deixis does NOT include the
hearer.


>At times the pronoun is also used:

in a situation of emphasis (_gu_ etc. are emphatic pronouns).


>????    gu      gazte-ak
>        1PL:ABS  young-ABS:PL
>        "we the young people"

No question marks are needed here. _Gu gazteak gara._ ("WE are young.")
is
a correct sentence. A word of caution: Although very popular with
linguists, the _-o-_-Plural is optional and has very strong emotional
(affective) connotations. In Northern dialects of Basque such plurals
are
unknown and I know speakers of the standard language who do not use
them.

A good example of what Edith is looking for are words like:
_biok_, _hiruok_ meaning: "the two, three of us", referring to the
speaker
and another or two other persons (maybe including the hearer, but not
necessarily). Without proximal reference the forms would be:
_biek_, _hiruek_ for the ergative
_biak_, _hiruak_ for the absolutive
I would always gloss _-o-_ as proximal. It seems to be restricted to the

plural, but in a poem I have found a singular example too: _larreon_ 'in

this pasture here'. My informants do not accept this form for colloquial

Basque, but most of them have problems with the _-o-_plural forms as
well.
Best wishes,
Martin

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