16 Person syncretism in independent personal pronouns

This feature is described more fully in chapter 16.

Summary

In most languages, there are distinct forms for the three persons in both singular and plural (and in the dual as well, if there is one), e.g. French moi, toi, lui/elle, nous, vous, eux/elles. But in some languages, there is person syncretism, i.e. there is a form in the paradigm of independent personal pronouns that serves for more than one person. For instance, some languages have the same form in the 1st and 2nd person plural (e.g. Haitian Creole nou), and some languages have the same form in the 2nd and 3rd person plural (e.g. Seychelles Creole zot). Note that we are not concerned with pure number syncretism here (e.g. English you for 2sg/2pl).

Authors

Martin Haspelmath and the APiCS Consortium

Values

No person syncretism68
Syncretism between 1st and 2nd person3
Syncretism between 2nd and 3rd person5
Representation:76

Language Value Lexifier Details Source
Id Primary text Analyzed text Gloss Translation Type Language Audio Details