Ambiguity in the Taos Personal 

 Pronoun 



By John Peabody Harrington 



j]MBIGUITY in the personal pronoun is a flaw known to 

 occur in a large number of languages, and is always easy 

 to observe and interesting to examine. We can recognize 

 ambiguity in person, illustrated by the German and Scan- 

 dinavian pronoun for the second and third persons plural, 

 polite form; in number, as in English you, second person singular and 

 plural; in gender, as in Russian oni, third person nom. plural, masc. 

 and neut.; in case, as in Latin nobis, first person plural, dat. and abl. 

 Languages which have developed pronominal systems remarkably rich 

 and highly complicated in form, as, for instance, those of the Tanoan 

 family of New Mexico, find it difficult to avoid an unusual degree of 

 ambiguity. The Taos language of the Tanoan group possesses series 

 of pronouns built up on so elaborate and pretentious a plan as to 

 excite admiration on the first brief examination, but when one reflects 

 that in order to carry out this plan several hundred distinct prefixed 

 pronoun forms would be necessary while only seventy-five different 

 forms actually occur in the language, it is evident how far short of its 

 aims and ambitions the Taos pronominal system must fall. In fact, 

 not only does the context or condition of speaking have to come to the 

 rescue in innumerable instances to show for which one of several 

 possible combinations the pronominal form stands, but frequently 

 the relatively simple free personal pronouns have to be used in addi- 

 tion to the ambiguous prefixed forms in an attempt to make the sense 

 clear. Even this double usage at best succeeds only in making person 

 and case clear, while it fails to make number more definite. In Taos 

 we find numerous examples of pronominal ambiguity in all the cate- 

 gories mentioned above — in person, number, gender, and case. 



The pronoun is determined by the noun and the verb. The Taos 

 noun distinguishes two genders, animate and inanimate. The pro- 

 noun also distinguishes two genders, but certain verbs and certain 

 inanimate nouns formed from verbs must be preceded by pronouns 

 in -na n -. These pronouns in -na n - do not distinguish number. The 

 number and gender of the noun, in its unincorporated form, are indi- 

 cated by postfixes. Some classes of nouns use the postfix regularly 



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