Pronouns.
The following are the personal pronouns:—
| 1st Person: | nē, I; nē-tum, nē-lī, nē-lī-tum, we, excluding the person addressed:ī-tum, ī-lī, we, including the personaddressed; |
| 2nd Person: | nàng, thou; nàng-tum, nàng-lī,nàng-lī-tum, ye; |
| 3rd Person |  | lā, he, she, it; lā-tum, they; |
| ālàng,he, she; ālàng-lī, ālàng-ātum, ālàng-lī-tum, they. |
(The pronoun lā is really a demonstrative, = this, that: it is probable that the original pronoun of the third person was ā.)
These pronouns take the postpositions like nouns. The possessive or genitive prefixes are nē, my, our, excluding the person addressed; ē- or ī-, our, including the person addressed; nàng-, thy, your; ā-, his, her, its, their.
The demonstrative pronouns are—lā, lābàngsō, bàngsō, this; pl. lābàngsō-ātum, these: hālā, hālābàngsō, that; pl. hālā-tum, hālābàngsō-ātum, those. The syllable hā- connotes distance, as dàksī, lādàk, here; hā-dàk, there; hā āhèm che-voi-lo, “he returned home from a distance.”
(There appears once to have been another demonstrative pronoun, pi, pe, pā, still preserved in the compound words pi-nī, “to-day,” penàp, “to-morrow,” pedàp, “this morning,” pāningvē, “to-night.” Instead of pi and pe we also find mi, me, as mi-nī, me-nàp. This survival is important for the purpose of comparison with other Tibeto-Burman languages.)
As in other Tibeto-Burman languages, there is no relative pronoun; its place is taken by descriptive adjectival phrases. Thus “those six brothers who had gone to sell cow’s flesh” is—
|
kejòr-dàm-ā-tum |
| to sell going
(plural) |
“The man whom Tenton had tied with an iron chain” is—
In these constructions, it will be seen, the adjective or qualifying participle precedes the noun.
The interrogative syllable, used to form interrogative pronouns, is ko-: komàt, komàt-sī, who? kopī, pī, what? ko-pu, ko-pu-sī, kolopu, kolopu-sòn, how? ko-àn, ko-ànsī, how many? konàt, konàthu, where? konàm-tu, nàm-tu, nàm-tu-sī, when? Always when the sentence does not contain an interrogative pronoun, and sometimes when it does, the syllable mā at the end marks a question: “Are you afraid,” nàng pherē-dèt mā? Nē (probably an Assamese loan-word) is also used instead of mā: “Will you marry him or not?” do-jī-nē do-dē-nē?
The reflexive pronoun is āmethàng, self; binòng, own; but the most usual way of indicating that the action affects oneself is to prefix the particle che- (chi-, ching-, chēng-, and rarely cho-) to the verbal root: lā hèm che-voi-lo, “he returned home,” i.e. to his own house; ā-òng-mār-ātum che-pu-lo, “his uncles said to one another”; che-hàng-jō, “they asked for themselves.” With initial ing-, che- coalesces to ching: with ār- it unites to form chēr.