Pronouns: follow up

[Eduardo Ribeiro]

Hi,

In (Brazilian) Portuguese, French *moi* is commonly used informally, mainly
in a sort of tongue-in-cheek "style."  I suspect this usage can be
considered as typical of female speech, an impression that seems to
be corroborated by a quick internet search (look up "pra cima de *moi*",
"para *moi*", etc.).  Notice that diminutive *moizinha* 'little me (fem.)'
is also common, unlike *moizinho* "little me (masc.)'.

By the way, is anyone aware of clear cases of pronoun borrowing in Native
American languages (particularly, South American ones)?  The only case in
the literature I'm aware of is Pirahã, where pronouns would have been
borrowed from Tupi-Guarani, according to Dan Everett and Sally
Thomason--although, in my opinion, this is so far an unproven (maybe even
unprovable) hypothesis.  Any additional examples?

Best,

Eduardo


On 8/8/07, Florian Siegl <florian.siegl at gmx.net> wrote:
>
> During the last 24h I received a total of 17 e-mails on-list and
> off-list regarding my query. Thank you very much for answering and
> providing both references and further examples!
> Concerning my second question: I received a fair amount of comments and
> examples regarding the origin of reflexive pronouns though this is not
> what I'm looking for. Paraphrasing my intended question:
>
> - I'm interested in languages whose personal pronouns (!) are derived
> from body parts. If such personal pronouns are somehow derived from
> earlier reflexive pronouns this is fine, but I'm not looking for
> reflexive pronouns.
>
> - If a language has body part based personal pronouns, are they
> considered to be etymologically old (reconstructable into a
> proto-language) or are they more recent innovations? What about the
> history of the other personal pronouns?
>
> - As demonstrative pronouns tend to be grammaticalized as 3rd person
> pronouns, are there any languages known which have a body part based
> pronoun for 3rd person pronouns? One possible example seems to be Tundra
> Nenets, Uralic: body + POSS.3SG his body --> (s)he. Nick Enfield pointed
> out off-list, that Thai and Lao use such pronouns for 1st and 2nd person
> (but also for reflexives).
>
> - Is there any attested language which has a full set of personal
> pronouns consisting of body parts?
>
> Florian Siegl
>
>
> P.S. As a slip of the keyboard, I forgot to include English THEY from
> Old Norse in my yesterday's query on Eurasia which was mentioned several
> times. Guess one forgets the usual when looking for the unusual.
> Concerning pronoun borrowing in Eurasia, the list of good candidates
> seems to limited. English (from Old Norse), Forest Enets (from Ket),
> several Romani varieties (see posting by Matras), Siewierska 2004
> (274-277) has some additional examples from Dravidian and
> inclusive/exclusive categories in Indo-Aryan languages in the
> neighborhood of Dravidian languages.
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lingtyp/attachments/20070808/079e99df/attachment.htm>