Neo-Mandaic - Pronouns

Pronouns

There are five types of pronouns in Neo-Mandaic: personal pronouns (both independent and enclitic), demonstrative pronouns, indefinite pronouns (introduced in 3.2. above), interrogative pronouns, and relativizers (introduced in 6. below). The personal pronouns are illustrated to the right.

The independent personal pronouns are optionally employed to represent the subject of a transitive or intransitive verb. Whenever the singular forms appear before a verb, their final vowel is apocopated. The enclitic personal pronouns are in complementary distribution with them; they may represent the object of a transitive verb, a nominal or verbal complement or adjunct in a prepositional phase, or indicate possession on the noun. On nouns of foreign origin, they are affixed by means of the morpheme –d-. On the noun napš- ‘self’ they also serve to form the reflexive pronouns. Neo-Mandaic also has two reciprocal pronouns, ham ‘each other’ and hədādā ‘one another.’

Neo-Mandaic demonstrative pronouns distinguish between near-deixis and far-deixis in the singular, but not in the plural. They also reflect no distinction in gender. The original far-deictic plural demonstrative pronoun ahni ‘those’ (classical hania) has assumed the function of a general plural demonstrative pronoun. It is also often used in the place of the independent third plural personal pronoun. The demonstrative pronouns precede the noun they modify. In this position, the final vowel of the singular demonstratives is apocopated (these are the forms listed as ‘contextual,’ e.g. ā šeršānā ‘these religions’). Note that the plural demonstrative does not appear in the contextual form; instead, the singular forms are used before plural nouns (the plural morpheme indicating plurality on the whole noun phrase). Neo-Mandaic also has two locative demonstrative pronouns, hənā / ehnā ‘here’ and ekkāḵ ‘there.’

The interrogative pronouns are used to elicit specific information beyond a simple yes or no answer (which can be elicited simply by employing a rising intonation, as in English). Of these interrogative pronouns, only man ‘who’ and mu ‘what’ may substitute for either the subject or the object of a verb, obligatorily appearing at the beginning of the interrogative clause. Other interrogatives in Neo-Mandaic include elyā ‘where,’ hem ‘which,’ hemdā ‘when,’ kammā ‘how,’ kaṯkammā ‘how much/many,’ mujur ‘how, in what way,’ and qamu ‘why.’