Personal Pronouns

Yivrian personal pronouns, while not entirely regular, display a great deal more patterning than is typically found in European languages (though it is not unprecedented throughout the world's languages). The case endings of the pronouns are regular, though their stems are not, and while the endings for gender and plural are not the same as for regular nouns, they are regular within the pronouns themselves.

Essentially the pronominal system works as follows: for each person there is a unique vowel that distinguishes it in the nominative, and a unique consonant that identifies it in the other cases (the oblique cases). The third person is divided into animate and inanimate classes that act morphologically as different persons. Each person inflects for number, and the second person and third person animate inflect for gender. The stems are formed by adding a particular consonant or a vowel to the uniqe part in each case, then adding the pronominal endings for gender and number. The following table illustrates the nominative personal pronouns and the unique consonant used in the other cases:

The personal pronouns do not have a genitive case. Rather, a set of pronominal endings is used with the noun that is possessed, as is discussed in the nouns section. These pronominal endings reflect the unique consonant for each person and use a slightly different set of endings to indicate number and gender.

The other cases are formed by using the vowel é with the characteristic consonant for each person, followed by the pronominal gender and number prefixes. The case endings are the same. To form the contradative case, the prefix ru- is added to the dative form, as with other nouns. The following tables illustrate the case-forms of the personal pronouns:

Emphatic Pronouns

Yivrian has a special class of emphatic pronouns that are used for the personal pronouns when one wishes to give special emphasis to the person involved. The nearest English glosses are "he himself" and equivalents. Morphologically, these are formed by applying the possessive suffixes to the nominative forms of the pronouns themselves. These resulting emphatic pronouns are:

These pronouns are regular in their case forms. Thus, for example, the cases of aileva are:

Reflexive Pronouns

There is a special reflexive pronoun that is used in Yivrian when one of the arguments in the sentence is the same as the subject, and when the reflexive voice of the verb is not appropriate. Unlike English and most other European languages, the same pronoun is used regardless of the person and gender of the subject, although the pronoun usually agrees in number with its antecedent. For obvious reasons this pronoun does not occur in the nominative, and the genitive is given by the pronominal suffix pa-. The remaining cases are:

Interrogative Pronouns

The Yivrian interrogative pronouns are presented here, along with a few other interrogative adverbs and adjectives grouped together for convenience:

Declension of Interrogative Pronouns

The forms kel, kul are formed from the interrogative morpheme k- followed by the pronouns el, ul. Thus, they follow the declension of those pronouns except in the genitive case, where they take a regular formation as opposed to a pronominal suffix. They do not inflect for number or gender, even when the gender or number of the questioned element may be known. The following chart illustrates:

The other question forms are either invariable (kai, ku, kulai) or are regular for their classes (kulon, kotil, kosil). For the declension of kulon, kotil and kosil, see Declension of Adjectives and Adverbs.

Relative Pronouns

Adjunct Relatives

Yivrian distinguishes Adjunct Relatives from Independent Relatives according to the functions played by the phrases that they compose. The adjunct relatives create what in English we would regard as standard relative clauses--those that modify another element in the sentence which is overtly expressed. There are three adjunct relatives in Yivrian:

The adverbs kai, ku are invariable. Keth, on the other hand, is declined as a U-class noun except in the genitive. In the genitive, it is expressed by the pronominal suffix -ka, like the personal pronouns. It does not inflect for gender or number:

Independent relatives

Yivrian contains a larger number of independent relatives, which create clauses that have no overt antecedent. The independent relatives are:

All of these are invariable except for katha, which is declined as a regular V-class noun.

Other

Inclusive Pronouns

These pronouns are so named because they indicate "all" or "every" of their attribute.

Kalku and kalkai are invariable. Kal is declined as a regular U-class noun, so it's declension won't be illustrated here. Kalel is declined like kel, kul, i.e. the ending -el is declined as the personal pronoun el, as the following shows:

Exclusive Pronouns

As the name shows, these pronouns indicate the opposite of the qualities indicated above. There are a few of these that have no inclusive equivalent:

Again, kav is declined as a regular U-class noun, while kavel declines its ending as the personal pronoun with a regularly formed genitive in place of a pronominal suffix.

Determiner Prefixes with Pronouns

Personal Pronouns

Unlike in English and most other European languages, in Yivrian the personal pronouns may be used with a determiner prefix. The resulting words are demonstrative pronouns. The prefixes used are the same as those used with regular nouns, with the exception that the prefixes ending in a omit the a when used with pronouns. This usage is only common with the third-person pronouns (animate and inanimate). The following table shows the formation of these demonstratives in the masculine singular and inanimate singular. Note that these prefixes can be used with any other gender or number of the pronoun, as well.

The quantifier prefixes are also used with pronouns to limit their number or sense. This usage is not restricted to the third person in the same way that the determiner prefixes are. This table illustrates with the masculine forms of the personal pronouns:

In all of these, the pronominal root is inflected as usual, except that genitive is formed in the regular (nominal) fashion, and not with a pronominal suffix. For example:

Relative Pronouns

The independent relatives (see above) may be used with some of the determiner prefixes to form a special class of relatives. The only prefixes used this way are he-, pe-, and pa-. The resultant meanings are:

There is a final class of indefinite pronouns that is formed by applying the indefinite determiner prefix pa- to the interrogatives. These are the only pronouns formed in this fashion, but they are preferred to the equivalent compounds made from personal pronouns.

Summary Chart

The following chart describes in breif most of the non-personal pronouns that are used in Yivrian, and shows the relationships between them.