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65-475: Most Algonquian languages are similar enough that their relatedness has been recognized for centuries and was commented on by the early English and French colonists and explorers. For example, in 1787 (over a decade before Sir William Jones' famous speech on Indo-European), the theologian and linguist Jonathan Edwards Jr. deduced that the Algonquian languages of the eastern and central United States were "radically

130-622: A circuit judge in Wales, and then became involved in politics: he made a fruitless attempt to resolve the American Revolution in concert with Benjamin Franklin in Paris, and ran for the post of Member of Parliament from Oxford in the general election of 1780, but was unsuccessful. Jones was a radical political thinker, a friend of American independence. His work, The principles of government; in

195-571: A lateral fricative . One piece of evidence for the interdental fricative is that this is the reflex it has in Arapaho. However, other researchers have argued for its reconstruction as a lateral fricative, */ɬ/ , in part because of the aforementioned merger in most languages with the phoneme traditionally reconstructed as *l . As with *i and *o , it is unclear whether *č was an independent phoneme in Proto-Algonquian. Almost all instances where *č

260-495: A consonant, for example *ki·šekat- "be day" + *-ki = *ki·šekaxki "when it is day." Note that Bloomfield here actually reconstructed this word as *ki·šekaθki , but evidence from other Algonquian languages has shown that the cluster should be reconstructed as *xk . When two vowels became contiguous, if one was a long vowel and one was short, the short vowel dropped: *naka·- "stop" + *-en "by hand" = *naka·ne·wa "s/he stops him/her by hand." If both were long, an epenthetic *y

325-623: A dialogue between a scholar and a peasant (1783), was the subject of a trial for seditious libel (known as the Case of the Dean of St Asaph ) after it was reprinted by his brother-in-law William Davies Shipley . He was appointed puisne judge to the Supreme Court of Judicature at Fort William in Calcutta, Bengal , on 4 March 1783, and on 20 March he was knighted . In April 1783 he married Anna Maria Shipley,

390-417: A few idiosyncratic cases, however, this rule did not operate, and instead the consonants were changed in various ways. For instance, the combination θ+p produced when the root *eθ- "thither, thus" was added to the final *-pahto· "run" simplified to *xp : *expahta·wa "s/he runs thither." One regular exception to the "connective i" rule was when the conjunct suffix *-ki was added to a verb stem ending in

455-490: A handful of irregular exceptions to this pattern, however. For example, the prefixes lost their vowels before several kinship terms, as in *ne- + *-o·hkomehsa = *no·hkomehsa "my grandmother." Several rules for internal sandhi in morpheme combinations can be reconstructed. The most basic was the insertion of a "connective i" between two consonants. For example, *po·n- "cease" + *-m "act by speech on an animate object" = *po·n i me·wa "s/he stops talking to him/her." In

520-594: A lasting ethnic division in India between descents of indigenous Indians and those of the Aryans. This idea fell into obscurity due to a lack of evidence at the time, but was later taken up by amateur Indologists such as the colonial administrator Herbert Hope Risley . Jones also propounded theories that might appear peculiar today but were less so in his time. For example, he believed that Egyptian priests had migrated and settled down in India in prehistoric times. He also posited that

585-551: A letter published in French (1771), that the translator Anquetil-Duperron had been duped, that the Parsis of Surat had palmed off upon him a conglomeration of worthless fabrications and absurdities. In England, Jones was supported by Richardson and Sir John Chardin; in Germany, by Meiners. Anquetil-Duperron was labelled an impostor who had invented his own script to support his claim. This debate

650-522: A memoir sent to the French Academy of Sciences in 1767 Gaston-Laurent Coeurdoux , a French Jesuit who spent all his life in India, had specifically demonstrated the existing analogy between Sanskrit and European languages. In 1786 Jones postulated a proto-language uniting Sanskrit, Iranian, Greek, Latin, Germanic and Celtic, but in many ways, his work was less accurate than his predecessors, as he erroneously included Egyptian , Japanese and Chinese in

715-440: A plural suffix *-ari . Another important distinction involved the contrast between nouns marked as proximate and those marked as obviative . Proximate nouns were those deemed most central or important to the discourse, while obviative nouns were those less important to the discourse. When two third person participants appeared in a sentence, one was marked as proximate and the other as obviative, in order to distinguish which one

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780-466: A single consonant (other than *h ) or vowel, or with a consonant plus *w or *y ; there were no sequences of consecutive vowels; and the word always ended in a short vowel. The vowels *i and *o never occurred in initial syllables. A sequence of consonant+semivowel could not be followed by *o or *o· . There was also a restriction which prevented two-syllable nouns from ending in a sequence of short vowel + consonant + short vowel. In most cases, when

845-495: A total of eight vowels. The same inventory of eight vowels was found in Proto-Algic, but Proto-Algonquian did not inherit its inventory directly from Proto-Algic. Rather, several sound changes left pre-Proto-Algonquian without short * i and * o . It is not clear that they had redeveloped by the time of Proto-Algonquian. All instances in which Bloomfield reconstructed *o can now be reconstructed as *we based on evidence from some of

910-475: A valid separate cluster in PA (Munsee wìilùshtíikan , Blackfoot moʼtokááni , "head, hair"). Finally, all consonants and consonant clusters could be followed by *w or *y (although the sequences *čw and *hy did not occur; and *t and *θ were regularly replaced before *y , for which see below). Several allophonic processes, morphophonemic processes, and phonological constraints can be reconstructed. Among

975-402: Is a series of "dental" consonants, written th , nh , and (in some languages) lh . They are always laminal (pronounced by touching with the blade of the tongue) but may be formed in one of three different ways, depending on the language, the speaker, and how carefully the speaker pronounces the sound. They are apical interdental [t̺͆~d̺͆ n̺͆ l̺͆] with the tip of the tongue visible between

1040-639: Is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothic and the Celtic , though blended with a very different idiom, had the same origin with the Sanscrit ; and the old Persian might be added to the same family. This common source came to be known as Proto-Indo-European . Jones was the first to propose the concept of an " Aryan invasion " into the Indian subcontinent , which according to Jones led to

1105-464: Is closely associated with this observation, he was not the first to make it. In the 16th century, European visitors to India became aware of similarities between Indian and European languages and as early as 1653, the Dutch scholar Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn had published a proposal for a proto-language ("Scythian") for Germanic , Romance , Greek , Baltic , Slavic , Celtic and Iranian . Finally, in

1170-547: Is probably also of recent origin", derived from earlier (pre-Proto-Algonquian) *ye sequences and morphophonological shortening. Proto-Algonquian had a smaller number of consonants than Proto-Algic. The reconstructed consonants are as follows (given in the Americanist phonetic notation common in the literature): The phoneme given in the table as ⟨r⟩ was reconstructed by Bloomfield as *l , but Goddard has more recently argued that it should be reconstructed as *r , largely because

1235-430: Is reconstructed are before *i , *i· , or *y , where it does not contrast with *t (see below), or are cases of diminutive consonant symbolism. However, Goddard recommends continuing to write it in reconstructions, since it seems to have been present in the clusters *čp and *čk ; since it can be reconstructed before *a in the term *čapo·nk- "splash"; and since *t does appear before *i· in some reconstructions of

1300-404: Is required, but it is more common to transcribe them as advanced alveolars, as in ⟨ n̟ t̟ d̟ θ̟ ð̟ r̟ ɹ̟ l̟ ɬ̟ ɮ̟ ⟩. Interdental consonants are rare cross-linguistically. Interdental realisations of otherwise-dental or alveolar consonants may occur as idiosyncrasies or as coarticulatory effects of a neighbouring interdental sound. The most commonly-occurring interdental consonants are

1365-680: The Chinese were originally Hindus belonging to the Kshatriya caste. Jones, in his 1772 Essay on the Arts called Imitative , was one of the first to propound an expressive theory of poetry, valorising expression over description or imitation: "If the arguments, used in this essay, have any weight, it will appear, that the finest parts of poetry, music, and painting, are expressive of the passions...the inferior parts of them are descriptive of natural objects". He thereby anticipated Wordsworth in grounding poetry on

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1430-511: The Vedas with Rāmalocana, a pandit teaching at the Nadiya Hindu university, becoming a proficient Sanskritist. Jones kept up a ten-year correspondence on the topic of jyotisa or Hindu astronomy with fellow orientalist Samuel Davis . He learnt the ancient concept of Hindu Laws from Pandit Jagannath Tarka Panchanan . Over the next ten years, he would produce a flood of works on India, launching

1495-532: The Eastern languages (for example, Bloomfield's *nekotwi "one" is now reconstructed as *nekwetwi based on forms like Munsee nkwúti ). There are still a handful of instances where *o can be reconstructed, usually as the result of a morphophonological process of vowel shortening. Goddard concludes that "an independent phoneme *o is of no great antiquity in Proto-Algonquian", but recommends continuing to use it in reconstructions. Likewise, Berman states that "PA *i

1560-657: The Honourable Sir William Jones. Containing a Retrospective Survey of the Progress of Science, and the Mohammedan Conquests in Asia . Arthur Schopenhauer referred to one of Sir William Jones's publications in §1 of The World as Will and Representation (1819). Schopenhauer was trying to support the doctrine that "everything that exists for knowledge, and hence the whole of this world, is only object in relation to

1625-580: The Indo-European languages, while omitting Hindustani and Slavic . Jones also suggested that Sanskrit "was introduced [to north India] by conquerors from other kingdoms in some very remote age" displacing "the pure Hindi" of north India. Nevertheless, Jones's third annual discourse before the Asiatic Society on the history and culture of the Hindus (delivered on 2 February 1786 and published in 1788) with

1690-559: The Sperm Whale's brow? I put that brow before you. Read it if you can. Edgar Allan Poe 's short story " Berenice " starts with a motto, the first half of a poem, by Ibn Zaiat: Dicebant mihi sodales si sepulchrum amicae visitarem, curas meas aliquantulum fore levatas. It was taken from the works of William Jones, and here is the missing part (from Complete Works, Vol. 2, London, 1799): Dixi autem, an ideo aliud praeter hoc pectus habet sepulchrum? My companions said to me, if I would visit

1755-521: The University of Nadiya. William Jones was born in London; his father William Jones (1675–1749) was a mathematician from Anglesey in Wales, noted for introducing the use of the symbol π . The young William Jones was a linguistic prodigy , who in addition to his native languages English and Welsh, learned Greek , Latin , Persian , Arabic , Hebrew and the basics of Chinese writing at an early age. By

1820-501: The Vedânta school consisted not in denying the existence of matter, that is solidity, impenetrability, and extended figure (to deny which would be lunacy), but in correcting the popular notion of it, and in contending that it has no essence independent of mental perception; that existence and perceptibility are convertible terms." Schopenhauer used Jones's authority to relate the basic principle of his philosophy to what was, according to Jones,

1885-637: The age of 47 and is buried in South Park Street Cemetery . Jones is known today for his propositions about relationships between the Indo-European languages . In his Third Anniversary Discourse to the Asiatic Society (1786) he suggested that Sanskrit , Greek and Latin languages had a common root, and that indeed they might all be further related, in turn, to Gothic and the Celtic languages , as well as to Persian . Although his name

1950-458: The basis of a Romantic subjectivity. Jones was a contributor to Hyde's Notebooks during his term on the bench of the Supreme Court of Judicature. The notebooks are a valuable primary source of information for life in late 18th-century Bengal, and are the only remaining source for the proceedings of the Supreme Court. After reaching Calcutta, Jones was unhappy with the appointed pandits of

2015-412: The basis of only a single correspondence set ( *št in *weštikwa·ni , "his/her head"; and *hr in *re·hre·wa , "s/he breathes") and may not have been part of Proto-Algonquian. David Pentland, for example, argued that Ojibwe oshtigwaan , claimed as the only form requiring the reconstruction of *št , is a borrowing from Cree. However, evidence from Munsee and Blackfoot seem to also point toward *št as

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2080-408: The court, who were tasked with interpreting the laws of Hinduism and contributing to judgements. After a number of cases in which different pandits came up with different rulings, Jones determined to thoroughly learn Sanskrit so that he could independently interpret the original sources. Jones's final judicial project was suggesting and leading the compilation of a Sanskrit "digest of Hindu Law," with

2145-399: The daughter languages have innovated a great deal. PA had four classes of verbs: transitive verbs with an animate object (abbreviated TA), transitive verbs with an inanimate object (TI), intransitive verbs with an animate subject (AI), and intransitive verbs with an inanimate subject (II). Transitive verbs had two paradigms, termed objective and absolute . Objective verbs were used when

2210-656: The distribution and the usage of interdental [l̟] in English are not clear. Interdental approximant s [ð̞] are found in about a dozen Philippine languages , including Kagayanen ( Manobo branch), Karaga Mandaya ( Mansakan branch), Kalagan ( Mansakan branch), Southern Catanduanes Bicolano , and several varieties of Kalinga , as well as in the Bauchi languages of Nigeria. Interdental [ɮ̟] occurs in some dialects of Amis . Mapuche has interdental [n̟] , [t̟] , and [l̟] . In most Indigenous Australian languages , there

2275-516: The earliest attestations of the majority of languages show some sort of rhotic as its reflex, which in many languages subsequently changed to a lateral within the historical period. The precise pronunciation of the phoneme written ⟨θ⟩ is unknown. It has merged with the reflex of *r in all Algonquian languages except for Cree and the Arapahoan languages . Leonard Bloomfield originally suggested that it could have been either an interdental fricative or

2340-561: The eldest daughter of Jonathan Shipley , Bishop of Llandaff and Bishop of St Asaph . Anna Maria used her artistic skills to help Jones document life in India. On 25 September 1783 he arrived in Calcutta . In the Subcontinent he was entranced by Indian culture , an as-yet untouched field in European scholarship, and on 15 January 1784 he founded the Asiatic Society in Calcutta . He studied

2405-479: The end of his life, he knew eight languages with critical thoroughness. Jones's father died when he was aged three, and his mother Mary Nix Jones raised him. He was sent to Harrow School in September 1753 and then went on to University College, Oxford . He graduated there in 1768 and became M.A. in 1773. Financially constrained, he took a position tutoring the seven-year-old Lord Althorp , son of Earl Spencer . For

2470-726: The famed "philologer" passage is often cited as the beginning of comparative linguistics and Indo-European studies . The Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek , more copious than the Latin , and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists; there

2535-478: The first member of the clusters was unknown, and Bloomfield's choice of symbols to represent them was purely arbitrary. Thus, ⟨x⟩ does not represent *[x], ⟨ç⟩ does not represent *[ç], and ⟨ʔ⟩ does not necessarily represent *[ ʔ ]. Goddard argues that Bloomfield's arbitrary symbol ⟨x⟩ be reconstructed as *s , and Bloomfield's ⟨ç⟩ be reconstructed as *r . While a glottal stop phoneme is not otherwise reconstructed, given that Bloomfield's ⟨ʔ⟩ in clusters seems to represent

2600-487: The first translation of the Avesta scriptures arose. It was the first evidence of an Indo-European language as old as Sanskrit to be translated into a modern European language. It was suggested that the so-called Zend-Avesta was not the genuine work of the prophet Zoroaster , but was a recent forgery. Foremost among the detractors, it is to be regretted, was the distinguished (though young) orientalist William Jones. He claimed, in

2665-444: The four best-attested Algonquian languages: Fox , Ojibwe , Menominee , and Plains Cree . Following his initial reconstructions, investigations of other languages revealed that his "Primitive Central Algonquian" was essentially equivalent to Proto-Algonquian. Bloomfield wrote a refinement and expansion of his reconstruction in 1946, and his two papers remain the starting point for all research and reconstructions of Proto-Algonquian. In

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2730-502: The god of sport, who creates the game of chess as a gift for Mars to win Caissa's favour. Mars wins her over with the game. Caissa has since been characterised as the "goddess" of chess, her name being used in several contexts in modern chess playing. Thomas Maurice (1754–1824) published An Elegiac Poem in 1795; full title: An Elegiac and Historical Poem: Sacred to the Memory and Virtues of

2795-512: The grave of my lover, I might somewhat alleviate my worries. I answered "could she be buried elsewhere than in my heart?" There is a statue of Jones, by the sculptor John Bacon in St Paul's Cathedral , London, erected in 1799. Listing in most cases only editions and reprints that came out during Jones's own lifetime, books by, or prominently including work by, William Jones, are: Interdental Interdental consonants are produced by placing

2860-514: The modern study of the subcontinent in virtually every social science. He also wrote on the local laws, music, literature, botany, and geography, and made the first English translations of several important works of Indian literature. Sir William Jones sometimes also went by the nom de plume Youns Uksfardi (یونس اوکسفردی, "Jones of Oxford"). This pen name can be seen on the inner front cover of his Persian Grammar published in 1771 (and in subsequent editions). He died in Calcutta on 27 April 1794 at

2925-667: The most important underlying proposition of Vedânta. He made more passing reference to Sir William Jones's writings elsewhere in his works. On 28 September 1822, the Dutch orientalist Hendrik Arent Hamaker , who accepted a professorship at the University of Leiden , gave his inaugural lecture in Latin De vita et meritis Guilielmi Jonesii (The Life and Works of William Jones)(Leiden, 1823). Herman Melville 's Moby-Dick mentions William Jones in Chapter 79, "The Prairie": Champollion deciphered

2990-447: The most significant of these processes was that *t and *θ became *č and *š respectively before *i , *i· , and *y . For example, the initial *went- "from there" (as in *wentenamwa "s/he takes it from there") is realized as *wenč- in the word *wenči·wa "s/he comes from there", since it precedes *i· . There were several restrictions on phonotactics and the shape of the PA word that can be reconstructed. All words began with

3055-582: The neutralization of *p and *k and its realization in Menominee and Cheyenne is a glottal stop, it probably was indeed phonetically [ʔ] . The cluster written ⟨Hm⟩ shows up as p or m in most of the daughter languages, but as hm in Munsee (for example, PA *wi·kiwa·Hmi "house" becomes Ojibwe wiigiwaam , Fox wîkiyâpi , and Munsee wíikwahm ). The first member of the cluster may have been either *h or *ʔ . The clusters *št and *hr are each reconstructed on

3120-461: The next six years he worked as a tutor and translator. During this time he published Histoire de Nader Chah (1770), a French translation of a work originally written in Persian by Mirza Mehdi Khan Astarabadi . This was done at the request of King Christian VII of Denmark : he had visited Jones, who by the age of 23 had already acquired a reputation as an orientalist , and in appreciation of his work he

3185-567: The non- sibilant fricatives (sibilants may be dental but do not appear as interdentals). Apparently, interdentals do not contrast with dental consonants in any language. Voiced and voiceless interdental fricatives [ð̟, θ̟] appear in American English as the initial sounds of words like 'then' and 'thin'. In British English , the consonants are more likely to be dental [ð, θ] . An interdental [l̟] occurs in some varieties of Italian , and it may also occur in some varieties of English though

3250-497: The object of the verb was not present as an overt noun elsewhere in the sentence, while absolute verbs were used when the object of the verb was marked with an overt noun in the sentence. Objective verbs could also be used when an object was present, and in such cases indicated that the object was definite , as opposed to indefinite. William Jones (philologist)#Scholarly contributions Sir William Jones FRS FRAS FRSE (28 September 1746 – 27 April 1794)

3315-427: The onomatopoeic noun ti·nti·wa "blue jay" (however, see Wiktionary for more). Reconstruction of the consonant clusters has been relatively difficult, and the paths the clusters take in their evolutions to the daughter languages have been complex. The current view is that the permissible consonant clusters were (first member on the left, second member across the top): In several cases the actual phonetic identity of

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3380-403: The original plan of translating the work himself. After his death, the translation was completed by Henry Thomas Colebrooke . Jones said that "either the first eleven chapters of Genesis ... are true, or the whole fabrick [sic] of our national religion is false, a conclusion which none of us, I trust, would wish to be drawn." (1788, 225) He also said that "I... am obliged of course to believe

3445-438: The pronominal prefixes *ne- (first person), *ke- (second person), and *we- (third person) were added to a vowel-initial stem, an epenthetic *-t- was inserted between the prefix and the stem. Thus, the prefixes became *net- , *ket- , and *wet- respectively. For example, *ne- + *-ehkwa- = *netehkwa- "my louse". This feature goes back to Proto-Algic (compare Wiyot du- + híkw = dutíkw "my louse"). There were

3510-405: The same" ('radically' meaning having a common 'root', since radix is Latin for 'root'), and contrasted them with the neighboring Iroquoian languages . The earliest work on reconstructing the Algonquian proto-language was undertaken by the linguists Truman Michelson and Leonard Bloomfield . In 1925 Bloomfield reconstructed what he called "Primitive Central Algonquian", using what were at the time

3575-513: The sanctity of the venerable books [of Genesis]." (1788, 225) Jones "traced the foundation of the Indian empire above three thousand eight hundred years from now" (Jones, 1790). Jones thought it was important that this date would be between Archbishop Ussher 's Creation date of 4004 BC and the Great Flood that Jones considered to have been in 2350 BC. In Europe a discussion as to the authenticity of

3640-580: The subject, perception of the perceiver, in a word, representation." He quoted Jones's original English: ... how early this basic truth was recognized by the sages of India since it appears as the fundamental tenet of the Vedânta philosophy ascribed to Vyasa , is proved by Sir William Jones in the last of his essays: "On the Philosophy of the Asiatics" ( Asiatic Researches , vol. IV, p. 164): "The fundamental tenet of

3705-435: The tip of the tongue between the upper and lower front teeth. That differs from typical dental consonants , which are articulated with the tongue against the back of the upper incisors. No language is known to contrast interdental and dental consonants. Interdental consonants may be transcribed with the extIPA subscript, plus superscript bridge, as in ⟨ n̪͆ t̪͆ d̪͆ θ̪͆ ð̪͆ r̪͆ ɹ̪͆ l̪͆ ɬ̪͆ ɮ̪͆ ⟩, if precision

3770-447: The wrinkled granite hieroglyphics. But there is no Champollion to decipher the Egypt of every man's and every being's face. Physiognomy, like every other human science, is but a passing fable. If then, Sir William Jones, who read in thirty languages, could not read the simplest peasant's face in its profounder and more subtle meanings, how may unlettered Ishmael hope to read the awful Chaldee of

3835-492: The years since there has been an enormous amount of comparative work undertaken on the Algonquian family. There remains some disagreement over the Algonquian Urheimat (homeland of the protolanguage). The initial theory, first put forth by Frank T. Siebert, Jr. in 1967 based on examining of the ranges of numerous species of plants and animals for which reliable Algonquian cognates existed, holds that Proto-Algonquian

3900-560: Was a Welsh philologist , orientalist and a puisne judge on the Supreme Court of Judicature at Fort William in Bengal , and a scholar of ancient India . He is particularly known for his proposition of the existence of a relationship among European and Indo-Aryan languages , which later came to be known as the Indo-European languages . Jones also founded the Asiatic Society of Bengal in Calcutta in 1784 and continued to expand his knowledge of Eastern languages, particularly Sanskrit , at

3965-697: Was granted membership in the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters . This would be the first of numerous works on Persia , Anatolia , and the Middle East in general. In 1770, Jones joined the Middle Temple and studied law for three years, a preliminary to his life-work in India. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society on 30 April 1772. In 1773, he was elected a member of The Club , of which he became president in 1780. He spent some time as

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4030-417: Was inserted between the two. Proto-Algonquian nouns had an animate/inanimate contrast: nouns representing animate beings (and some traditional items viewed as having spiritual powers) were classed as animate , while all other nouns were inanimate . The plural marker differed in form depending on whether the noun was animate or inanimate: animate nouns took a plural suffix *-aki , while inanimate nouns took

4095-407: Was not settled for almost a century. In 1763, at the age of 17, Jones wrote the poem Caissa in English, based on a 658-line poem called "Scacchia, Ludus" published in 1527 by Marco Girolamo Vida , giving a mythical origin of chess that has become well known in the chess world. In the poem, the nymph Caissa initially repels the advances of Mars , the god of war. Spurned, Mars seeks the aid of

4160-571: Was spoken between Lake Huron's Georgian Bay and Lake Ontario , in Ontario , Canada, and at least as far south as Niagara Falls . Research a generation later suggests that in fact it was spoken farther west than this, perhaps "somewhere immediately west of Lake Superior " or on the Columbia Plateau . Proto-Algonquian had four basic vowels, *i , *e , *a , *o , each of which had a long counterpart (commonly written *i· , *e· , *a· , *o· ), for

4225-518: Was the subject and which was the object (since verbs inflected for whether they had a proximate or obviative subject and a proximate or obviative object). In a given stretch of discourse, there will not be two proximate or two obviative participants. There were personal pronouns which distinguished three persons, two numbers (singular and plural), inclusive and exclusive first person plural , and proximate and obviative third persons. Demonstrative pronouns have been more difficult to reconstruct, as many of

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