Click here to download the paper
This paper investigates Hiaki pronouns. The specific goals of the paper include documenting the range of Hiaki pronouns in various contexts, seeing if they behave as pronouns are normally predicted to behave, and investigating the differences between Hiaki pronoun types.
The “strong” forms and extra-short “clitic” forms of Hiaki subject pronouns can be seen below:
| Strong | Clitic | |
| 1sg | Inepo | =ne |
| 1pl | Itepo | =te |
| 2sg | Empo | =ee |
| 2pl | Eme’e | =’em |
| 3sg | A’apo | Ø |
| 3pl | Vempo | =(i)m |
One of the predictions about how pronouns are supposed to behave is that strong pronouns like a’apo cannot refer to non-human or inanimate entities, and so you must use weaker forms like clitics to talk about such things. Consider the following examples:
*Vempo mesapo manek.
Vempo mesa-po mane-k
3pl table-on sit.container-pfv
“They (the bottles) were standing on the table”
Mesapoim manek.
mesa-po=im mane-k
table-on=3pl sit.container-pfv
“They (the bottles) were standing on the table”
The first example, which uses a strong pronoun to talk about inanimate objects, is ungrammatical, while the second example, which uses a weaker pronoun form, is acceptable. Therefore, this prediction about pronouns seems to be correct when applied to Hiaki. To learn more detailed information about pronouns in Hiaki, download the paper above.