2.3  Pronouns

Proto-Tallic had numerous roots for personal pronouns of which the only ones surviving in Talmit are:

They are properly states rather than pronouns and can also take tense: ίize ’my past state’, éoze ’my future state’, áima ’your past state’, áuma ’your future state’. In the past & future plural, one uses compounds with pa ’state’.
To express ’I ain’t like that anymore’⁵, one would say ίize-láha eϕéwe-nójo ’[My present state is] dissimilar from my past state’.

There are no true pronouns for the 3rd person, demonstratives are used instead. Their roots are as follows:

Possessives are formed by compounds, or with the genitive mo (the latter as in Japanese), but most forms are contracted:

• amo mo > ámo ’your’
• ben mo > bémo ’this’, bemnéda ’this person’
• ϕron mo > ϕrómo ’that by you’, ϕromnéda ’that person with you’
• térmo ’that over there’, terméda ’that person [over there]’
• θérmo ’that one mentioned’, θerméda ’that person [which was mentioned]’

Locations are denoted by a compound with we, hwe ’place’ (hwe properly means ’direction’) or archaically by the simple we-grade 1.2.6:

• bénwe, †béwen ’here’
• ϕrónwe, †ϕréon ’there’
• térχwe, †téwer ’over there’
• θérχwe, †θéwer ’that mentioned place’

The word kos, literally meaning ’kin, family’ or ’group of associates’ is commonly used as an exclusive pronoun when possession is shared (cf. Jap. uchi). For example, one would use kózmo in phrases like ’my/our child’, ’our soldiers’ or ’my heavy metal band’ when talking to outsiders. It would be absurd to say ?éze-mo pan ’my child’ in Talmit, as it would imply that the speaker has begotten and given birth to it all by himself without a second person involved (I suppose it would be suitable for Dr. Frankenstein or Dr. Noonian Soong).

The word ta ’count noun’ can serve as a general pronoun equivalent to English ’one’, e.g. kawá-nóimo ta ’the red one’, bémo ta ’this one’ etc.

The interrogative pronoun is nwa(n)- for inanimates and ma- (< *ŋwa-) for animates:

• máda? ’who?’
• nwánta? ’what?’
• nwámpa? ’how, in what state?’
• nwánwe? ’where?’
• nwára? ’which one (of the things)?’
• mára? ’which one (of the persons)?’

One can use these or nwa(n)/ma with postpositions, e.g. máda-mo? ’whose?’, nwa-mo? ’of what?’, ma-la? ’about whom?’, nwa-la? ’about what?’, nwan-zo? ’how?, by what means?’ and so on.

Their partial reduplications nánwa and mánwa mean ’something’ and ’somebody’ respectively.