blog/posts/first-person-pronouns.md
2024-11-29 00:54:16 +01:00

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title: lántas pronoun update date: 2024-11-25 tags: [lántas, conlangs] conlang: laantas summary: first-person neopronouns. and… neoinflections? ...

so my "main" conlang @lántas@ is actually kind of old at this point. old enough that when i made the personal pronouns, i didn't know that plurality was a thing that existed, so until today, the first person pronouns were {!ká} in the singular, and {!til} in the [(grammatical)]{.note} plural. except that {til} is an @inclusive@ pronoun, meaning it can only be used when the listener is included. which, as you can see from the fact it has a wikipedia article, is a thing that real life languages do sometimes.

however, when someone uses "we" to mean "me and my headmates", that is (usually??) an exclusive usage. which means you can't use {til}, or the first-person plural verb inflection, and instead have to say {#kakas rú, rúl} {kakas rú(l)}, or "me and them". which is… pretty awkward.

it's time to get a new one.

pronouns

:::{.figure .hugescr .floating .right} {#kál} :::

it seems that it would be pretty unlikely, given people's general attitudes, that a personal pronoun dedicated to plurality would arise naturally. so this is the perfect opportunity to have a @neopronoun@. without grammatical gender existing in the first place, there's no particular pressure for a new third-person pronoun to crop up. {!rú} (or {!rúl}) fits everyone just fine. as far as i know, anyway.

so, {!kál}. it is pretty transparently the singular pronoun with the regular plural ending, {!kál}. but that's fine. it fits in with {!rú}{!rúl} 'he/she/they (sg)/etc, they (pl)', and almost with {!sur}{!sual} 'you (sg)/you (pl)' too.

{!kál} inflects almost like a regular noun with {!ka} stem, except for the COM, which matches {!tiksł} and {!ruksł}, and the locative cases, which keep the long vowel like {!ká} does.

in the table !SPL! stands for @system plural@ i guess. (and !IPL! for @inclusive plural@; the old thing.)


header-includes: |

...

1SG 1SPL 1EPL
NOM `{!ká}` `{!kál}` `{!til}`
GEN `{!kat}` `{!katł}` `{!tial}`
COM `{!kakas}` `{!kaksł}` `{!tiksł}`
CAR `{!kassa}` `{!kassal}` `{!tissal}`
INS `{!kala}` `{!kalal}` `{!tilla}`
ESS `{!kugu}` `{!kugul}` `{!tigul}`
TRA `{!kasti}` `{!kastil}` `{!tistil}`
EXE `{!kaču}` `{!kačul}` `{!tičul}`
LOC `{!ká}` `{!kál}` `{!tíl}`

see §34 of the noun page for inadequate descriptions of these cases that one day i will maybe expand on.

verb inflections

:::{.figure .hugescr .floating .right} {#káš}
{#kúš} :::

the existing person suffixes for verbs actually have no resemblance at all to the pronouns. the new one does though. after all, it's new! it's {!káš} for the subject and {!kúš} for the object.

1SG 1SPL 1EPL
SBJ `{!na}` `{!káš}` `{!náš}`
OBJ `{!du}` `{!kúš}` `{!dúš}`