Pronouns in Euraisa and elsewhere

[Yaron Matras]

V. Elšík & Y. Matras, 'Markedness and langauge change: The Romani sample'
(Mouton, 2006) and Y Matra 'Romani: A lingusitic introduction' (CUP, 2002)
contain examples of borrowing involving pronouns in Romani. In fact, the only
Romani personal pronoun involved at all in borrowing is the 3-PL (in various
dialects), which sometimes adopts a nominal plural ending that is also used to
form the 3 per pronominal plural in the contact language. Eg.

Romani 3PL 'on'
in contact with Hungarian > 'on-k'
in contact with Turkish > 'on-nar' (from 'on-lar')
in contact with Slovene > 'on-i'

the emerging forms are identical or very similar to the 3Pl pronouns in the
contact languages.

Some notes on pronominal borrowing appear in A. Siewieska's book on 'Person'
(CUP, 2004?).

I personally would not consider under the same heading either Mixed Languages
(where pronouns often pattern with the lexifier language), due to the special
circumstances of their emergence, or the cited (south)east Asian examples
(Malay and Indonesian and Thai all borrow pronominal forms), since these are
highly lexicalised terms of address/terms of reference, and are not
functionally equivalent to deictic and anphoric pronouns.

Concerning bodyparts -- some years ago there was a discussion on 
LinguistList on
whether AAE 'my ass, your ass' etc constituted genuinely grammaticalised
pronouns. A scene from the Borat-movie suggests that they do (young African
Americans provide Borat with 'our asses' as a translation equivalent 
for 'we').

Secret languages ( = 'Sondersprachen') frequently form pronouns using the
formula 'possessor + Dummy' (e.g. Shelta 'my geel, your geel' etc), so the
choice of a bodypart my be secondary to the process, and simply one out of
several available Dummies.

Yaron Matras


Quoting Nicholas Ostler <nostler at CHIBCHA.DEMON.CO.UK>:

> 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
> 172 Bailbrook Lane, Bath, BA1 7AA, England
> nostler at chibcha.demon.co.uk
> http://www.ogmios.org
>



-- 
Yaron Matras
Professor in Linguistics
School of Languages, Linguistics & Cultures
University of Manchester
Manchester M13 9PL, UK

Phone (direct): (00)44 (0)161 275 3975
Romani project: (00)44 (0)161 275 5999
www.llc.manchester.ac.uk/Research/Projects/romani/