R. Anne Osborne
The unspecified pronoun dee
in Kmhmu'
Kmhmu' personal pronouns have a singular, dual and
plural distinction, with gender differentiation in the second and third person
singular forms. As well as these forms there is an unspecified pronoun dee.
Unlike the other personal pronouns, dee has no semantic constraints with
respect to person, gender or number. It exhibits a range of meanings depending
on its context. This paper explores the syntactic and pragmatic constraints
that govern the use and determine the interpretation of dee.
Previous work describes dee
as a reflexive pronoun (Suwilai 1987:33; Suksavang et al. 1994:166) and a
co-referential pronoun (van den Berg 1988:5). Building on these findings, this
paper presents 4 structurally defined uses of dee, some of which have multiple
pragmatic functions. In a well-formed sentence dee is used for any second
pronominal co-reference within a clause. The antecedent reference is usually
the subject of the clause, as shown in (1) where dee is co-referent with the
first person singular pronoun ʔoʔ.
ʔoʔi ʔɑn ɡeej deʔ m̥uɑk deei/ *j
1sg give 3sgm get
hat
CO-REF
I gave him my hat.
dee may also be co-referent with a non-subject, as
shown in (2).
ʔoʔi ʔɑn ɡeej hɑk deʔ m̥uɑk deej/ *i
1sg give 3sgm nevertheless get hat CO-REF
I gave him his hat.
The co-referential meaning applies within a clause,
and extends to embedded clauses within a matrix clause.Where there is no
antecedent, dee can have a default first person or generic interpretation. In
other syntactic contexts, it can mean 'alone', or function as a particle in the
verb complex. In certain pragmatic contexts, dee is used to mitigate the force
of a speech act, or mark events that are off the storyline in the narrative.
References
Berg, René van
den, with the assistance of Mark Taylor. 1988. Some Khmu' particlesː
A preliminary analysis. Anduze, ms.
Suksavang
Simana', Somseng Sayavong & Elisabeth Preisig. 1994. Kmhmu' – Lao – French
– English dictionary.
Suwilai Premsrirat. 1987. A Khmu grammar. Pacific Linguistics Series A
– No. 75, Papers in South-east Asian Linguistics 10. 1-143.