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) |