Personal Pronoun

Makasae Osoroa Personal Pronoun

So far, we found that Makasae Osoroa has
       1. three persons system (speaker, listener, and other),
       2. singular vs. plural number system (one person and more than one person),
       3. the inclusive and exclusive dinstinction (inclusion of the listenr and exclusie of the listener).

These are summerized in Table 1.

Table 1. Makasae Osoroa Personal Pronoun

		sg	plural
1st person	exclusive	ani	ini
	inclusive		pi
2nd person		ai	i
3rd person		gi / wori	era

The inclusive and exclusive distinction is a typical characteristic of Austronesian languages but not of Papuan languages. It should be investigated whether the distinction is introduced from influence of close contact other Austronesian langauges, indevendent development in Makasae, or reflex of the proto Bird head's langauges, New Guinea.

Example sentences are provided in (1)-(8) in Table 2. For soundfiles, click

Table 2. Examples of Makasae Osoroa Personal Pronoun.

		sg	plural
1st person	exclusive	(1) Ani mu'u karaka. 1st.sg. banana like "I like bananas."	(5) Ini mu'u karaka. 1st.pl.excl. banana like "We (excluding you) like bananas."
	inclusive		(6) Pi mu'u karaka. 1st.pl.incl. banana like "We (including you) like bananas."
2nd person		(2) Ai mu'u karaka. 2nd.sg. banana karaka "You like bananas."	(7) I mu'u karaka. 2nd.pl. banana like "You guys like bananas."
3rd person		(3) Gi mu'u karaka. 3rd.sg. banana karaka "He/she likes bananas." (4) Wori mu'u karaka. 3rd.sg. banana karaka "He/she likes bananas."	(8) Era mu'u karaka. 3rd.pl. banana like "They like bananas."

Last Update: April 18, 2005