Pronouns that inflect for tense

[claude-hagege]

Matthew's interesting remark on Hausa ya makes me think that it all depends on how we define "pronoun". If we admit, as Matthew does, that ya is a separate word, then I would consider it as a pronoun, because being a separate word seems to be one of the main defining features of elements that we call personal pronouns, knowing that their other defining features are that they inflect for person (and, in various languages, mentioned by several members of LINGTYP in this discussion, also T or A or M) and may function as subjects or complements. To that extent, they should be distinguished from indices, which are personal (and often tensed) affixes on the nominal (cf. Akkadian or Bugis) or verbal predicate (for the distinction I propose between personal pronoun (free or separate word) and personal index (affix), let me take the liberty of referring to La structure des langues (Paris, PUF), 2001 (6th ed.): 98). Here is, among many others, an example, taken from Aymara, in which we have both a personal pronoun and a personal affix in the same sentence:
xuma-Xa tluqatla-a-ta-wa (2SG-TOP  boy-PRED-2SG.IND-FOC) "you are a boy".
We see here that "2SG" is expressed both by xuma (a separate word which is a person marker and to which the topic marker is attached) and -ta- (an inflectional (person) affix that also encodes the mood; by the way, and to come back to Roland Hemmauer's query, this example shows that in some languages, like Aymara, nominals, in order to function as predicate, need a special predicative marker (-a-  in the example above) ). Although Hausa ya in Matthew's example encodes COMPL, in my opinion it behaves as an index rather than a pronoun.
All best, 
Claude.
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