Pronouns: follow up

[Harald Hammarström]

Dear Florian et al.,
Since the discussion drifted away from Eurasia I might mention a few
more cases from the literature.

It is assumed that Gumuz (all varieties) 1p pl excl is borrowed from a 
noun meaning family in a local variety of Arabic, because of the 
phonetic and semantic plausibility and the lack of a Nilo-Saharan [sic!]
cognate for the form in question. For details see:

Ahland, Colleen Anne 2004 Linguistic Variation Within Gumuz: A Study of the 
Relationship Between Historical Change and Intelligibility (Ethiopia, 
Sudan, MA University of Texas at Arlington

Also as to clusivity, I remember reading somewhere about borrowing of 
clusivity, if not of actual forms, in coastal New Guinea from Austronesian 
into non-Austronesian, e.g. Inanwatan. There are probably more cases from 
Bomberai peninsula but I cannot check from where I am sitting right now --
maybe others can fill in.

Lastly, there are many suggestions of pronoun borrowing (of all kinds) in 
the Bird's Head area, according to Voorhoeve. I say suggestions because, 
even though they made it into the literature, I find hardly one of the
cases compelling. Details see:

Voorhoeve, C. L. The Masked Bird: Linguistic Relations in the Bird's Head 
Area. In: Haenen, Paul; Pouwer, Jan, Editors. Peoples on the Move: Current 
Themes of Anthropological Research in New Guinea. Nijmegen: University of 
Nijmegen, Centre for Australian and Oceanic Studies; 1989: 78-101.

all the best,

H


On Wed, 8 Aug 2007, Jeanette Sakel wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I've argued that the 1st person plural inclusive pronoun (bound form) - and 
> indeed the entire concept of clusivity - is a loan in the Bolivian language 
> Mosetén (Mosetenan) :
>
> Sakel, Jeanette (2005) 'Development of an inclusive-exclusive distinction - a 
> possible loan scenario in Mosetenan' p. 359-379 in E. Filimonova (ed.) 
> Clusivity. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
>
> Greetings,
> Jeanette
>
>
>
> On 8 Aug 2007, at 18:58, Eduardo Ribeiro wrote:
>
>> 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.
>> 
>
>