Case syncretism of personal pronouns (Northern Mansi)

PPNoSyncCase: The number of case-marked forms of personal pronouns differs from that of nouns, but none are syncretic.


In Northern Mansi, the case paradigm of nouns and pronouns are substantially different. Aside from the nominative, only the ablative case is present in both paradigms:


case

noun(‘pot’)

personal pronoun (‘he/she/it’)

nominative

pūt

taw

locative

pūt-t

-

lative

pūt-n

-

ablative

pūt-nǝl

tawe-nǝl

translative

pūt-yγ

-

instrumental

pūt-ǝl

-

accusative

-

tawe

dative

-

tawe-n

comitative-
instrumental

-

tawe-tǝl

[based on Kálmán (1976)]


The cases which are missing from the nominal or the pronominal paradigm can be expressed by postpositions. Case syncretism may only be present in the marking of the accusative case, where the morphologically unmarked noun (1) is opposed to the morphologically marked pronoun (2).

Author: 

Szilvia Németh