Chapter 13 Pronouns and reference
The core pronouns
Say the three of them in a row: mi-a, thi-a, shi-a. One shape, three onsets. Phi hands every person in a conversation a word of the same size, two syllables on the same open hiatus, and who you are in the sentence changes the consonant and nothing else.
Phi has three singular personal pronouns. They mark grammatical person without gender, animacy, rank, or case endings.
| Phi | Gloss | Referent |
|---|---|---|
mia | 1SG | the speaker |
thia | 2SG | the addressee |
shia | 3SG | one other being or thing |
mia: the speaker
mia keeps the same form in every role:
mia thia nila. — I see you.
thia mia sano. — You know me.
mia shea lothea. — I love peace.
In careful speech, mia has two syllables: stressed mi, then a separate unstressed a. The same hiatus pattern unites all three core pronouns.
thia: the addressee
thia refers to one person or thing being addressed:
wa thia shea nai. — Are you at peace?
mia thia whaline. — I thank you.
thia womu lothea. — You love home.
Second person has one form across formal and informal settings. Politeness, when wanted, belongs to pi, and named relationships may use an honorific. The single form declines to encode rank, so the grammar never asks who outranks whom before you can say you. Its th asks the tongue for a moment of deliberate placement, and some speakers like it that the word for you begins with a sound that cannot be said carelessly.
shia: another being or thing
shia refers to one third-person being or thing:
shia shua. — They arrive. It arrives.
mia shia sano. — I know them. I know it.
shia womu mioru nai. — Their home is beautiful.
The pronoun marks neither gender nor animacy. English may render it as singular they, he, she, or it according to the referent. A noun or productive name can identify someone more specifically when it matters; the pronoun's whole ambition is to let a person be mentioned without being categorized.
Case comes from position
The forms do not change as subject, object, possessor, or prepositional object:
| Role | Phi | English |
|---|---|---|
| subject | mia thia nila. | I see you. |
| object | thia mia nila. | You see me. |
| prepositional object | thia wei mia shua. | You come to me. |
| possessor | mia shelu welao nai. | My book is good. |
A bare pronoun at the start of a predicate clause is the subject. Predicative possession uses phelu, as chapter 11 explains.
Topic-drop
Once a subject is established and remains recoverable, a later clause may omit it:
shai shelira thiku nai mioru nai.
CONC forest small be beautiful be.
mia shelu theo. shelomu.
1SG book read. understand.
Topic-drop is optional. Repeating the noun or pronoun is always available when two referents might compete. Omission can make an exchange lighter, but context does real work here and sometimes gets it wrong. Phi has shia when an explicit third-person pronoun is useful; topic-drop is an alternative, not a substitute for clarity.