Pronouns in Euraisa and elsewhere

[Nicholas Ostler]

Florian Siegl wrote:
> Dear fellow typologists,
>
> I'm looking for instances and references concerning personal pronoun 
> borrowing [equivalents of I, YOU, HE] in Eurasia. Available literature 
> concentrates on the Americas, South and South-East Asia but as far as 
> Eurasia is concerned, I have not yet found more instances than one 
> clear example (Ket --> Forest Enets).
Japanese boku 'I' (restricted to young-ish males, and possibly now 
ladettes and tomboys) is by origin a borrowing from Chinese 'slave, 
servant' 僕 (i.e. 'your humble servant') now pronounced pú, so the 
borrowing is probably several centuries old. .
> However, this example did not make it into the general literature so 
> far and I wonder if pronoun borrowing is really so extraordinary in 
> Eurasia and whether there are no other known instances.
>
> My second question concerns pronouns in a global context; Are there 
> any languages attested whose personal pronouns are derived from 
> lexemes such as body or any other possible body part and if yes, are 
> these pronouns considered to be etymologically old or are they more 
> recent grammaticalizations? Any reference welcome...
Would you accept 'somebody', 'anybody' and (in Scots):
"When a body meets a body, comin' through the rye..." (Robert Burns) ?

I am also tempted to quote Sophocles' Antigone
o: koinon autadelphon Isme:ne:s kara
O common self-fraternal, of Ismene, head
i.e. O you, Ismene, my own sister....
and the sentence goes on with a 2nd person "ar' oistha..." - "do you 
know...?"

And in Latin (Livy)
habet poenam noxium caput
'the guilty head has been punished' i.e. the guilty one has been punished

-- 
Nicholas Ostler 

Chairman, Foundation for Endangered Languages
Registered Charity: England and Wales 1070616
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