Summary: number in personal pronouns

[Matthew Anstey]

The Dinka of (southern) Sudan do this as well. The parent's are named after
the first born child, eg Yar, father of Yar, mother of Yar. This form of
address is interesting in light of the once common practice of giving away
the first-born child after weaning as a gift to the sister of the mother.
The parents would still retain this name after giving the child away.

Matthew

Matthew Anstey
Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam
Faculteit der Godgeleerdheid
Residence: 7 East Place, Kambah ACT 2902, Australia
ansteyfamily at optusnet.com.au
+61 (0)2 6296 4044


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Discussion List for ALT
> [mailto:LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG] On Behalf Of Paul Hopper
> Sent: Friday, April 18, 2003 11:18 PM
> To: LINGTYP at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
> Subject: Re: Summary: number in personal pronouns
>
>
> It may be just a bit off topic, but this discussion leads
> into "teknonymy", identifying adults by the names of their
> children (e.g. in Malay a woman might be referred to as Mak
> Fatima, "Fatima's Mum", and this would be her principal
> designation in the community.) It's common in Malay and
> related languages, also in Temiar and other indigenous
> languages in that area. There's quite a bit of literature on this.
>
> Paul
>
> ---------------------------
> Paul Hopper
> Paul Mellon Distinguished Professor of the Humanities
> Department of English College of Humanities and Social
> Sciences Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA
> Telephone (412) 268-7174 Fax (412) 268-7989
>
>
> --On Friday, April 18, 2003 9:53 AM +0400 Nina Dobrushina or
> Michael Daniel <daniel at QUB.COM> wrote:
>
> Re: Suzanne Kemmer and Enrique Palancar Vizcaya:
> I remember having read about languages where 'wife' is
> usually designated descriptively - as 'my children's mother'.
> I do not know whether it is used as a form of address (which
> then would contradict Pier Marco Bertinetto's tentative
> generalization) or only as third person reference (which
> would be a bit less to the topic of the discussion).
>
> Note that Edith's example ("I went to Spain for a vacation"
> instead of "My family and I went to Spain for a vacation" -
> both possible in Russian, to my
> mind) extends the discussion of obligatory mention of
> co-possessors to the obligatory co-participants of a
> situation in general.
>
> Michael
>
>
>
>
> ---------------------------
> Paul Hopper
> Paul Mellon Distinguished Professor of the Humanities
> Department of English College of Humanities and Social
> Sciences Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA
> Telephone (412) 268-7174 Fax (412) 268-7989
>