Pronouns in Euraisa and elsewhere

[Paul Hopper]

Yaron Matras writes:

> 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.
> 

This thread started as a focus on Eurasia, specifically because borrowed pronouns are easily identified in SE Asia, but Eurasian examples are not so well known. But since we seem to have moved southeast: I would be cautious about dismissing perfectly ordinary pronominal forms like Malay saya "I" < sahaya (a Sanskrit loan) as  "not functionally equivalent to deictic and anphoric pronouns". Wouldn't it always take "special circumstances" to enable pronoun borrowing?

Paul Hopper