Кровлѣц

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Personal pronouns

Declension of personal pronouns

Personal pronouns in Iridian are inflected for person, number, and case. As with English, there are three grammatical persons in Iridian: the first person, which is used to refer to the speaker; the second person, used to refer to the addressee; and the third person used to refer to anything else. Iridian, however, distinguishes between animate and inanimate third persons. The animate third person is used to refer to people, animals, and other living things, while the inanimate third person is used to refer to inanimate objects. Like nouns, pronouns are inflected for case. While number, however, is not marked on nouns, pronouns are inflected for number as well. Unlike nouns, too, the forms of personal pronouns are mainly irregular. The table below shows the personal pronouns in Iridian.

Case	1SG	2SG	3SG.ANIM	3SG.INAN	1PL	2PL	3PL.ANIM	3PL.INAN
Unmarked	да	я	ша	то	ме	това	сы	нума
Agentive	дам	ям	сым	том	мам	твоюм	сним	нумам
Patientive	доня	ѣіи	са	та	моя	твоя	сама	нумая
Genitive	ци	іи	сни	ѣзы	мы	твей	сніи	нумы
Instrumental	ду	ѣю	саю	той	мою	твою	саму	нумою
Vocative	дѣ	яю	саю	той	мою	твою	саму	нумою

Weak forms

Pronouns may also appear as clitics attached to the end of a noun or a verb phrase. This is called the weak form of the pronoun. When attached to a noun, the weak form of the pronoun is used to indicate possession. When attached to a verb phrase, the weak form of the pronoun is used to indicate the subject of the verb. The table below shows the weak forms of the personal pronouns in Iridian.

Strong form	Example	Weak form	Example
ци	ци мамка ‘my mother’	-им	мамким ‘my mother’
іи	іи мамка ‘your mother’	-їа/-а	мамкїа ‘your mother’
сни	сни мамка ‘his/her mother’	-от	мамкот ‘his/her mother’
ѣзы	ѣзы мамка ‘its mother’	-oв	мамков ‘its mother’
мы	мы мамка ‘our mother’	-ом	мамком ‘our mother’
твей	твей мамка ‘your mother’	-аме	мамкаме ‘your mother’
сніи	сніи мамка ‘their mother’	-ай	мамкай ‘their mother’
нумы	нумы мамка ‘their mother’	-aт	мамкат ‘their mother’

With verbs, the weak form of the pronoun is attached to the end of the verb phrase in the conjunctive form, in which case the final -е/ѣ of the conjunctive is elided. The weak form may only be used where the pronoun is not the subject of the sentence.

Здалѣк. Сам трава здалилицим.

‘I had breakfast. I only had bread for breakfast.’

Думы же ражек. Дума же разайницот.

‘(S/he) already left the house. S/he already left the house.’

Usage

The second person singular form is considered informal and is used only with close friends and family. When speaking with strangers or in formal situations, the second person plural or the third person animate plural is often preferred, with the latter being the more formal of the two. For example, a waiter will only ever address a customer using the сы forms while the latter may use either the сы or това forms when addressing the waiter.

To a friend: Ли же пящица?

To a stranger or an acquaintance: Ли же пящицаме?

To one’s grandfather, for example: Ли же пящицат?

‘Have you eaten yet?’

Another common alternative would be to use the title or occupation of the person being addressed instead. (Using the name of the person being addressed may be considered impolite, and is reserved for close friends and family.) For example, a patient may address their doctor as Саўца ‘doctor’ (or its equivalent vocative form Саўцоў). This usage may be supplemented by the use of the сы form (and never the това form). Pronoun dropping is less common in more formal situations.

The first person plural may be used in a similar fashion in formal contexts or when the speakers wishes to communicate their humility. The choice of pronouns and the degree of formality is determined by the context and the speaker’s attitude towards themself and/or the listener.

The use of possessive pronouns is less common in Iridian than it is in English. Where the possessor is clear from the context, the possessive pronoun can and is often omitted. When referring to body parts, in particular, the possessive pronoun is often not used, and where it is used, the patientive and not the genitive pronoun is employed. Thus the English sentence ‘My knees hurt’ would be translated as Длинь (доня) прозичиме with доня being optional; this sentence can more literally be translated as ‘The knees are hurting (on me)’ (cf. Spanish ‘Me duelen las rodillas’).

Another difference between Iridian and English pronouns is the fact that Iridian pronouns can be modified by attributive phrases like any other noun. For example, зушталніи да, ‘I who am happy’ or more literally, ‘(the) happy I’ is a perfectly grammatical construction in Iridian while the equivalent in English would mostly be reserved in literary contexts, if at all, or more commonly rephrased with a relative clause ‘I, who am happy, ...’ or an apposition ‘I, the happy one, ...’.

The reflexive ко

The reflexive pronoun ко is used to refer to the subject of the sentence. The table below shows the declension of ко.

Case	Declension
Unmarked	ко
Agentive	како
Patientive	коў
Genitive	ако
Instrumental	камо

The unmarked reflexive may also be used as an intensifier modifying the subject of the sentence (whether it is a pronoun or a noun) but would require the predicate verb phrase to be nominalized.

Та рублѣк. Да ко рубліицала.

‘(I) did this. I myself was the one who did this.’

Хадукы нипомило президентам каздатнек. Президент ко хадукы нипомилую каздаткицала.

‘The president ordered the removal of the statue. It was the president himself who ordered the removal of the statue.’

Demonstrative pronouns

Iridian has a three-way distinction for demonstrative pronouns: proximal, medial, and distal. The proximal is used to refer to something close to the speaker, the medial to something close to the addressee, and the distal to something far from both the speaker and the addressee. In addition, Iridian distinguishes between animate and inanimate referents. The declension is highly irregular and is shown in the table below.

Case	Animate			Inanimate
Case	Proximal	Medial	Distal	Proximal	Medial	Distal
Unmarked	ша	тот	дне	то	томо	дине
Agentive	сым	тотом	днем	том	томом	динам
Patientive	са	тота	днѣ	та	тома	дина
Genitive	сни	тотемы	днѣй	ѣзы	томей	дей
Instrumental	саю	тай	дноў	той	томой	дноў

Observe that the proximal forms are identical to the third person pronominal forms in the previous section.