Cenyani grammar reference

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• Contents
• 1 Usage
  • 1.1 Gender
  • 1.2 First person plural – “we”
  • 1.3 Reflexiveness
• 2 Actual pronouns

Personal pronouns are those which correspond to English “I”, “you”, “he/she/it” and so on. This page also details reflexive pronouns: Cenyani does not have a separate category for reflexive pronouns, but rather expresses reflexiveness through modified personal pronouns.

Personal pronouns in the genitive, unlike nouns, do not match the case of the noun they modify. There is therefore only a single genitive form of each personal pronoun. When genitive personal pronouns are detached from the noun they modify, they behave differently: see possessive pronouns for more details.

Usage

Being replacements for nouns and noun phrases, personal pronouns inflect for case just like nouns. Noun cases are described in nouns.

Other than that, there are a few things worth noting, which I have tried my best to explain below.

Gender

Although there exist different forms for masculine and feminine pronouns, the Cenyani language and indeed cenyi culture is entirely devoid of the concept of gender. There are, in short, no social differences whatsoever between males and females. This is explored in greater detail in the culture section, on the psychology page.

Because of the lack of gender in cenyi culture, the masculine/feminine forms of personal pronouns do not actually describe the social gender of a person, but rather their biological sex. Where the sex of a person is unknown or where obscurity is desired for whatever reason, the sex-neutral third-person singular pronoun sen is used. Furthermore, the sex-specific third-person plural forms are used only for groups consisting entirely of people with the specified sex.

First person plural – “we”

Unlike English, which has only one personal pronoun of this form, Cenyani has two, depending on who is included in the “we”:

tay

is inclusive, that is, it includes the listener(s). It is equivalent to saying “you and I (and maybe he/she/it/they)”.

seya

is exclusive, that is, it does not include the listener(s), but some other third-person participants. It translates roughly as “he/she/it/they and I”.

Reflexiveness

As mentioned above, Cenyani does not have a separate class of reflexive pronouns (that is, pronouns such as the ones that end in “-self”, e.g. “myself”, “yourself”, etc.). Instead, reflexiveness in Cenyani is expressed with a special reflexive personal pronoun. Those of you who are familiar with German will notice that this pronoun is very similar in function to German sich; and indeed Danish/Icelandic/Norwegian/Swedish sig as well.

Genitive reflexive pronouns can also be used to disambiguate between two third-person owners:

Note, however, that the verb nas is only used in the sense of giving something as a gift, not just generally handing people things. The second sentence would more likely be interpreted as referring to a third person, someone not previously mentioned. (You don’t give people their own things as gifts. That’s just wrong.) If Menni just wanted to hand Ámrego Ámrego’s book, the verb yem would be used instead.

In short: the reflexive pronouns are used to refer back to the subject of the sentence. It is worth noting here that some verbs mandate the use of reflexiveness, much like how German, for example, requires you to say sich setzen – which literally means something like “to set/sit oneself” – for “to sit down”. Reflexive constructs are constructed thus:

• For references to a third-person subject, the reflexive pronoun is used alone without modification; for example, the silly sentence “he ate himself” would be ešet sam on, where sam is the singular accusative reflexive pronoun. This is also used for genitives; see the Menni/Ámrego example above.
• For references to a first- or second-person subject, the reflexive pronoun is only used for focus. It is placed right after the normal personal pronoun, and follows its case. The person from the sentence above might wish to say “I ate myself!”, which would be ešet ä ya sam!. The reflexive pronoun can actually also be used for emphasis of the subject: “I did it myself” would be ä sa tanet mír.

The reflexive pronoun itself is completely sex-neutral. It also has different forms for different numbers; do see the table below, and keep in mind that in first- and second-person references, the reflexive pronoun must correspond in number with the personal pronoun (tóm saci “themselves”, rather than *tóm sam “themself”, for example).

Also note that in third-person references, the nominative forms of the reflexive pronoun are only ever used with adpositions.

Actual pronouns

	nom.	acc.	dat.	exp.	gen.
	Singular
1st	ä	ya	yaŋ	yar [jar]	yaš
2nd	te	et	teŋ	ter	teš
3rd inanim.	ta	tac	tat	tar [tar]	taš
3rd anim.	sen	sem	seŋ	ser	seš
3rd masc.	on	om/óm	oŋ/óŋ	ór	ónš
3rd fem.	yan	yem	yeŋ	yer	yanš
	Plural
1st (incl.)	tay	taym	tayŋ	tayr	tayš
1st (excl.)	seya	seyam	seyaŋ	seyar	seyaš
2nd	teyi	teyim	teyiŋ	teyir	teyiš
3rd	tón	tóm	tóŋ	tór	tónš
3rd masc.	tóno	tónom	tónoŋ	tónor	tónoš
3rd fem.	tóna	tónam	tónaŋ	tónar	tónaš
	Conceptual
3rd	mir	mír	mír	myr	myš
	Reflexive variants
sg.	sa	sam	saŋ	sar [sar]	syš
pl.	sai	saci	sati	sari [sari]	siš
cc.	sö	sacö	satö	sarö [sarø]	söš

Adpositions are always appended to the nominative form, with the exception of ä, which always uses the accusative form ya: yaraþ “at me” rather than *äraþ. Adpositions are only detached in reflexive constructs that consist of more than one pronoun: raþ tón sai (rr) “at themselves” instead of *tónaþ sai or variations thereof.