Wablenica - was: IskousogosRe: Historical Explanation for *pi as Plural and Proximate and

["Alfred W. Tüting"]

 >[...]
Third person plural verbal marking is also used as a backgrounding
device.  That is, when the subject is unimportant/unspecified, third
person plural verbal morphology without an overt subject NP is used [...]<<

This is a pretty common feature also outside American Native tongues:

1) Italian (etc.): e.g. 'dicono' lit.: "they say" -> it is said; 'mi
chiamano' lit.: "they call me" -> I'm called/my name is

2) In Hebrew, the 'unspecified' masculine 3rd pers. plural form seems to
be used for exactly the same purpose (not unlike in Italian, usually
translated as passive voice or - e.g. in German - as an impersonal
paraphrase "man sagt/man nennt mich").
In Hebrew, there's still a very special pecularity (somehow reminding me
of Dakota _-pi_: For this grammatical purpose, the 3rd p pl maskuline
goes *without* the personal pronoun! E.g. _'omrim_ -> it is said,
different from _hem 'omrim_ -> they (males) say. BTW, only the male
plural form can be used this way (hen 'omrot -> they (fem.) say with the
focus on the speakers).


Alfred