Universal 1943:
- Original
- It appears to be only indicators of the 1st and 2nd person which combine to form new pronouns. (but see Comments)
- Standardized
- IF indicators of any persons combine to form new pronouns, THEN the combination of 1st and 2nd person singular also occurs.
- Keywords
- pronoun, personal pronoun, 1st person, 2nd person
- Domain
- morphology
- Type
- implication
- Status
- diachronic
- Quality
- absolute
- Basis
- unspecified
- Source
- Greenberg 1993: 17
- Counterexamples
There are a few languages in which extensive combinations of a fundamental set of pronouns occur. An example is Bamileke, a member of a group of languages closely related to but not identical with Bantu. However, it appears that in such cases a combination of 1st and 2nd singular always occurs, so that the statement […] would be downgraded to an implicational one. More importantly however, such combinations are facultative in their use as against the fundamental pronouns of which they are composed. (Greenberg 1993:17, fn. 6)