Feature GB028: Is there a distinction between inclusive and exclusive?

Patrons: Hannah J. Haynie

Description

Summary

Is there a pronoun or other marker that explicitly marks the inclusion of an interlocutor? This feature is not restricted to the pronominal system but includes person indexing as well. If inclusive is marked overtly in either the pronominal system or through verbal marking this is sufficient to trigger a 1 for this feature, even if exclusive has no overt morphological marking.

Procedure

  1. Code 1 if there is a pronoun or other marker, such as a person index, that explicitly marks the inclusion of an interlocutor in the first person plural.
  2. Code 0 if the sections of the grammar discussing pronoun systems and person indexing on verbs describe no distinctions between inclusive and exclusive persons, and no pronominal forms or indices are found in examples glossed with grammatical information including INCL/EXCL or meanings such as ‘you and I’ or ‘we all (not you)’. Pay close attention to the non-singular forms of first person pronouns and indices.
  3. If you are uncertain whether some pronominal or index form(s) mark(s) a clusivity distinction (e.g. a form in a single example glossed ‘you and I’ that is known to encode dual number but is not clearly described regarding inclusivity, or multiple first person pronouns whose differences are not adequately described), code ? and provide a brief comment describing the forms or descriptions that were unclear.

Examples

Southern Sierra Miwok (ISO 639-3: skd, Glottolog: sout2985)

Personal Pronominal Suffixes:

Series 1 Series 2 Series 3 Series 4
1DU.INCL -ti: -ti:
1PL -tti-/-mahhi: -me-
1PL.INCL -ticci: -ticci:
1PL.EXCL -mahhi: -mahhi:

(Broadbent 1964: 43)

Southern Sierra Miwok would be coded as 1. The lack of a first person dual exclusive form does not affect this designation, nor does the fact that the language has first person plural markers in Series 1 and 2 that do not mark clusivity.

Chalcatongo Mixtec (ISO 639-3: mig, Glottolog: sanm1295)

Pronouns

PERS GENDER FREE CLITIC
1 Familiar rùɁù =rí
Polite naɁa =na
Inclusive (pl) žóɁó =žó

(Macaulay 1996: 81)

Chalcatongo Mixtec would be coded as 1. A plural pronoun that is unmarked for clusivity can be derived from the polite or familiar first person pronouns with a prefix, but the inclusive first person is inherently plural. There is no first person plural pro-form that is marked for exclusivity. The existence of an inclusive form is sufficient to trigger a 1 and the lack of an exclusive form has no impact on this.

Yongbei Zhuang (ISO 639-3: zyb, Glottolog: yong1276)

First person

Singular Plural (excl.) Plural (incl.)
ku tuo, po tu lau’

(Luo 2008: 327)

Yongbei Zhuang is coded as 1.

Further reading

Cysouw, Michael. 2003. The paradigmatic structure of person marking. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Filimonova, Elena. 2005. Clusivity: Typology and case studies of the inclusive exclusive distinction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

References

Broadbent, Sylvia M. 1964. The Southern Sierra Miwok language. (University of California Publications in Linguistics, 38.) Berkeley: University of California Press.

Luo, Yongxian. 2008. Zhuang. In Anthony V. N. Diller, Jerold A. Edmondson & Yongxian Luo (eds), The Tai-Kadai languages, 317–377. London: Routledge.

Macaulay, Monica A. 1996. A grammar of Chalcatongo Mixtec. (University of California Publications in Linguistics, 127.) Berkeley: University of California Press.


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0 absent 1114
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? Not known 94
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Values

Name Glottocode Family Macroarea Contributor Value Source Comment