Personal Pronouns
[Person]p[singular,plural]: nominative, genitive, accusative
1ps: o, ot, op
1pp: od, odet, odip
1pp-incl: odwī, odwet, odwip
1pp-excl: odjī, odjet, odjip
2ps: ke, ket, kep
2pp: ked, kedet, kedip
2pp-excl: kedjī, kedjet, kedjip
3ps: bi, bit, bip
3pp: bid, bidet, bidip
The first person plural: Bjašk uses three different “we”s — inclusive, exclusive, and “unmarked” (i.e., it marks clusivity). Inclusive includes the listener (you and I) while exclusive does not (my friend and I [and not you]). It’s a perfectly polite way to grammatically inform someone whether or not they are included in a “we” without rudely stating so. The unmarked form (od, etc.) is only used informally for quick speech when inclusiveness is obvious (though the use of 1pp-incl or 1pp-excl in these cases wouldn’t seem awkward either) OR it is used when inclusiveness is strictly unknowable (and its usage in a formal setting would likely draw a reader’s attention to that fact). In formality, “we” is rarely used except in the case of “we as humans” in which case one would use 1pp-incl.
The second person singular: Bjašk makes no distinction between formal and informal pronouns. Either speaking to a friend or a teacher, ke is appropriate. If a speaker wishes to be polite, instead of a special pronoun, one might employ a title (Teacher, Sir or Madame, Father or Mother, etc.).
The second person plural: 2pp carries clusivity, much like 1pp. [FINISH LATER]
The third person series: Bjašk uses a variable-assignment method in the third person. The first i in each pronoun in the above example can be replaced with any other stressed vowel (e, a, o, or u, often in that order) to refer to a different subject. The third person carries no gender nor animacy. He, she, or it can be assigned to bi, be, ba, bo, or bu. In this way, Bjašk can keep up with five different third person subjects all while maintaining pronouns. Compare: Ron invited Bob to Jim’s party. -> ?* He invited him to his party. Ron invited Bob to Jim’s party. -> Bi [invited] bep [to] [party] bat.
Note the multiple similarities among these pronouns: ‘d’ often means ‘plural’. -(e)t denotes the genitive (recall that Bjaškets is the genitive of Bjašk) while -(i)p denotes the accusative (we will see that Bjaškipf is the accusative of Bjašk). The irregular pronouns to remember are 1pp-incl and 1pp-excl — in the nominative they take the -ī ending (the /i/ sound without the syllable stress). This ending is dropped to add the -et and -ip endings. Note that for the accusative the -ī is removed and -ip is added, a different ‘i’ (as unstressed and unmarked, it will be pronounced /ɪ/).
Bjašk is not a pro-drop language — verbs do not inflect for the full subject.
