Cherokee Grammar & Syntax
Cherokee Pronoun Prefixes Part III - Cherokee Pronouns for Animate Objects
More Complexity - Animate Object Pronouns!
If you've made it through the Pronouns I and Pronouns II pages, you
saw that unlike European languages, Cherokee has pronouns that specify
who did what to whom. They are bi-lateral, in that one single pronoun
describes how A did what to B and how B did what to A.
If you've gone through the previous Pronoun pages, you may be
interested in an excellent little application for drilling the bound
pronouns in a game-like fashion. This application for drilling the
entire set of Cherokee bound pronouns in small bites was created by
ᎹᎦᎵ and can be found here: Cherokee
Bound Pronouns
and also is available from the Apple Store, Google's Play Store, and
Amazon.
By this time you've probably figured out that there are lot of
possible bound pronouns and you're right! There are over 130 bound
pronouns that cover most cases of who is doing something to whom, with
a few pronouns performing double or even multiple duty but easily
understood in context. A pretty full list of Cherokee bound pronouns
can be found on the Online
Cherokee Dictionary website in the Grammar Guide
(in the navigation bar at top of page) from Durbin Feeling's
monumental work "Cherokee-English Dictionary" (or in the hard copy of
it if you have one) where a much more thorough study can be found in
Section "I-B. The pronoun prefixes" between pages 256 and 281. In
particular, skip to Figures 3 for the Set A pronouns (p. 280) and
Figure 4 for Set B pronouns (p. 281). We've attempted to simplify and
break them out some in these pages.
In Figure 3 in Dr. Feeling's Grammar Guide in the CED, among others,
there are headings for "3 sg. an." and "3 pl. an.". These are the
pronouns used for animate or living objects. Cherokee
recognizes a difference between living objects (people, animals,
sometimes plants) versus non-living objects (rocks, food, utensils,
etc.). For some of the pronouns, the different is slight and difficult
for English speakers to distinguish, for example /tsi-/ (short vowel,
inanimate) vs /tsi:-/ (the ":" indicates a long vowel) but in other
cases the difference is much clearer.
In English we would say:
a. I saw a rock.
b. I saw it. (I did something to it)
c. I saw a cat.
d. I saw him (or her).
So we can make the distinction in English, too, but it takes two
pronouns - I -> it or I -> him/her. However, for animals in
English we usually say "I heard it" whereas Cherokee uses an animate
object bound pronoun (as long as the animal is walking around,
breathing, i.e., still alive).
a. ᏅᏯ ᎠᎩᎪᎲᎢ. - nvya agigohv'i. I saw a rock.
b. ᎠᎩᎪᎲᎢ. - agigohv'i. I saw it.
c. ᏪᏌ ᏥᎪᎲᎢ. - wesa tsi:gohv'i. I saw a cat.
d. ᏥᎪᎲᎢ. - tsi:gohv'i. I saw him (or her). (note long vowel)
Cherokee pronoun prefixes show not only "who did what to whom" actions but also can describe whether the object of the action is living or inanimate. All of this information is described via a single pronoun prefix in Cherokee. The subject->object relationship, that is the direction of the action (who/what acted on whom/what), and the animacy of the object (is it living or inanimate) are very important when determining the correct Cherokee pronoun prefix.
In the table below, the boxes contain 2 forms of the pronouns. The top ones are used with vowel stem verbs and bottom ones with consonant stem verbs.
| Singular | Dual | Plural | |||
| inclusive | exclusive | inclusive | exclusive | ||
| 1st
Person |
tsiy- tsi:- |
e:n- e:ni:- |
o:sd- o:sdi:- |
e:d- e:di:- |
o:ts- o:tsi:- |
| 2nd Person |
hiy- hi:- |
e:sd:- e:sdi:- |
e:ts- e:tsi:- |
||
| 3rd Person |
Set A or B |
N/A |
Set A or B |
||
These pronouns are used for animate objects in all tenses in place of other Set A or Set B pronouns. Note that there is no 3rd person singular or plural subject -> animate object pronouns. In these cases, normal Set A or Set B 3rd -> 3rd person pronouns are used for He/She -> him/her interactions as appropriate to the verb or tense. (Note: there may be some variations of usage from one community of speakers to another.)
Note! ALL Animate Object
pronouns trigger "h" alteration! Montgomery-Anderson states this
several times in his 2015 Cherokee Reference Grammar. See
also Pronouns V -
h-Stem Verbs on this website.
Plural animate objects (them) are identified by putting the ga-
(with consonants) or g- (with vowels) markers before the pronoun
instead of de- or d- for inanimate objects.
| Singular | Dual | Plural | |||
| inclusive | exclusive | inclusive | exclusive | ||
| 1st
Person |
gatsiy- gatsi:- |
ge:n- ge:ni:- |
go:sd- go:sdi- |
ge:d- ge:di:- |
go:ts- go:tsi:- |
| 2nd Person |
gahiy- gahi:- |
ge:sd- ge:sdi:- |
ge:ts- ge:tsi:- |
||
| 3rd Person |
Set A or B |
N/A |
Set A or B |
||
These pre-pronominal additions allow us to know if an action is on
only a single animate object or on many objects that are animate.
For example:
a. ᏅᏯ ᏓᎩᎪᎲᎢ. - nvya dagigohv'i. I
saw rocks.
vs
c. ᏪᏌ ᎦᏥᎪᎲᎢ. - wesa gatsi:gohv'i.
I saw cats.
If you've made it this far, you've made good inroads into understanding Cherokee pronoun prefixes! Once you begin to learn how to read the pronoun prefixes it will start to make a lot of things clearer in the areas of what is going on between whom and who is doing what to whom. Again, the app I linked to at the top of the page is a great way to learn these pronouns.
The pronoun prefix is one of the most important and complex aspects of Cherokee verbs and they cannot be overlooked!