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Studies in the Linguistic SciencesVolume 27, Number 2 (Fall 1997)NOTES ON LAI CHIN PERSONAL PRONOUNS AND OVERT CASEMARKINGF. K. Lehman 1 (Chit Hlaing)University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaignf-lehman@uiuc.eduwithKenneth Van BikUniversity of California at Berkeleyvanbik@socrates.berkeley.eduEvidence is presented that the morphology of Lai Chin personalpronouns overtly and explicitly instantiates the proposition that per-sonal pronouns in at least many languages are essentially demonstra-tives as Postral long ago argued with regard to English (1970). In theLai Chin instance, furthermore, the (pro-)nominal element is shown tobe an element, sometimes overt, sometimes empty, amounting semanti-cally to arbitrary, non-specific pro. This leads in turn to some interestingresults about the treatment of the so-called case markers in this (split-)ergative language.1. We begin with the observation that Lai Chin seems, at least at first glance,an especially apt case in support of Postal's 1970 paper on English pronouns(now at least tentatively accepted by Chomsky 1995). That is, Lai pronouns seemto be morphological composites, in which the second element gives evidence ofbeing nominal, whilst (certainly logico-semantically/indexically) the first is de-monstrative — it certainly 'points', i.e., is a choice function on a set of possiblepersons). Thus we have (where syllable final -h serves to indicate a glottal stop)8 2 Studies in the Linguistic Sciences 27:2 (Fall 1997)(5) mah le mah i kalh hlah uhone & one refl cross do not you-pl.(obj.)Do not stumble over one another!where 'one' (cf. Chomsky 1995:41) serves to express the overt equivalent ofPRO(arb)' namely, the arbitrary 'ith' or 'jth' member of a set of persons (Lehman1985a, 1986).Now, in this connection it is notable that mah can be replaced (somewhatoffhandedly, by being deleted altogether — this option is more usual and accept-able in Mizo/Lushai) by the element nih, where the latter element marks the refer-ent as in some sense focally contrastive (cf. Lehman 1973, on the force of thecomparable Burmese element ka. m). Thus,(6) kanmah cu Laimi kan-siwe 'abs' Lai 2pl beWe are Lai Chin people(7) kannih cu Laimi kan-sidittowhere the first is a plain statement of fact, whilst (7) contrasts being Chin (which'we' are) with being, say 'vai' (Burmese or Indian), which others are. In a similarvein, we can consider(8) kannih cu kan-kal laiwe go fut.We shall go [no matter who else may go/even though you do not](9) kanmah kan-kal laiWe are going to go [simple statement of a fact]This is to say that nih replaces mah when the selection of a personal referentgiven by the first pronominal element is at least implicitly contrastively comparedwith a different selection. I shall deal later on with the absence of the post nomi-nal element cu in (9). It is instructive to look at an additional example, an examplemore useful still because it concerns a non-subject DP:(10) anmah (*nih) bantuk si kan-duhthey like be we wantWe would like to be like them.We are, after all, already comparing {bantuk) ourselves with 'them', so that anycontrast added by nih would be either meaningless or confusing. Marginally atleast, we can, however get(11) annih bantuk si kan-duhWe would like to be like them [rather than like those others].Similarly, no doubt, possessive pronouns (see Van Bik 1986:320) seem or-dinarily to require the use of forms in -mah and not in -nih:, e.g.,(13) keimah ta/*keinih tamineLehman & Van Bik: Lai Chin personal pronouns 8 3(14) kan tuh-mhuimy hoeAnd yet, when a contrast is entailed, forms in -nih are used, as in(15) annih inn cu a-ngan, sihmanhselaw kannih inn / kannih ta cutheir house Abs. it-big, however our house/ours Absa-hmeit-smallTheir house is big but our house/ours is small.It may be wondered whether this element nih is the same as the element nihused to mark ergative Case (see now Lehman 1996 SEALS VI for the questionwhether this is inherently a Case Marker or not). Etymologically it may well be,but synchronically the two are separate, as (12) shows.(16) kannih nih cun kan-duh lowe erg. thus lpl want neg.We do not like it that way. [whatever you or others may like] 22. Let me now take up the question why the 'Case marker' (actually a post-demonstrative deictic element, arguably specifier of DP — Lehman 1996) cu canbe used or not used in different contexts. In particular, why is it necessary to omitit in (9), above, but perfectly fine, even necessary, in (6)? The answer seems to liein the neighborhood, at least, of the following observations. (6) is an equational-copular sentence. As such it implicates an inherent contrastiveness: one cannotsay that anyone or anything is a member of any one lexico-semantic categorywithout implicitly invoking other categories by contrast. To categorize one thingcontrasts with the categorization of different kids of things or persons — as amatter of basic DEFINITION. (9) is quite different in just this regard. The elementcu then is obviously compatible with the contrastive force of nih (as in (8),though not with the non-contrastive force of (8), whilst this fails just in case thecontrast is inherent to the predication itself, ( cf. (6) as against (7)). Similarly, in thecase of adjectives of quality,(18) amah a-thahe lsg. goodHe is good(19) amah cu a-lhaHe is good [which those others are certainly not]Assume then the aforementioned treatment of the so-called Case-markers, cuand nih as really (post nominal) specifiers of DP. To the extent that they are in-deed deictic elements in this sense, cu in particular 'points' to an entity at leastimplicitly selected earlier on discourse context, reinforcing the sense of a particu-lar selection as against others under the same choice function (demonstrativeproper) over the same set or Proper Class. In the case of equational sentences and,to some extent at least adjectives of quality, contrast is more or less implicit, sothat cu is compatible whether the pronoun ends with mah or with nih. The erga-tive use of nih presents more obscure problems. It is also contrastively deictic in8 4 Studies in the Linguistic Sciences 27:2 (Fall 1997)some sense, but in this usage the force seems to be to express the contrast be-tween subject and object inherent in the Disjoint Reference Rule (DJR) and un-derlying the Ergative-Absolutive Case distinction in such languages. One isforcefully reminded, once again, of Burmese ka. (no), which serves to mark sub-jects contrastively with possible objects and also marks any non-subject and non-object nominal as focally contrastive apart from the DJR (Lehman 1973), andwhich clearly occupies the same slot as the post-demonstrative (spec of DP), ascan easily be seen in literary form, where it commutes, more or less, with thi (oogS),itself overtly the same morphological element as the proximal literary proximaldemonstrative (cf. Lehman 1985b) :(20) di lu ha I Scy uconthis person [-ha, a neutral, non-contrastive, non-focal specifier of DP,often glossed otherwise as 'one' or even 'thing'](21) di lu ka. I §cy m«this person [subject](22) thi lu thi/co£&c$ cogSiithis person [literary form — especially as a subject]One obviously compares these to Lai Chin(23) cu mipa cusuch person 'abs.'(24) cu mipa nihsuch person 'erg.'3. One must therefore draw the conclusion that (a) Lai Chin pronouns have astheir second element a nominal-referring element, which can be either contrastivewith other elements (nih) or more neutral (mah), and (b) the specifier of a DP moregenerally, i.e., the so-called post-nominal demonstrative element, is always in somesense or other also contrastive: marking, in the case of cu, either an implicit con-trast inherent in equational categorization or adjectival quality or an imposedcontrast compatible with pronominal second-element nih but not with mah; in thecase of the ergative use of nih in the specifier of DP, the contrast between subjectand object is inherent under the DJR.However, there is some evidence that seems to run counter to this proposal.The element mah (but never nih) can also occur in what appears to be the posi-tion of the demonstrative, head of DP. Thus,(25) mah kep hithis button spec [prox]and so on — examples of this usage abound in the exercises in Haye-Neave1948. In the face of this evidence, one may suppose that the personal pronouns,however morphologically composite they obviously are, are entirely demonstra-tive. The absence of specific person elements (kei, nang, etc.) then simply leavesthe pronoun non-specific, and, it is assumed, the nominal element is an EC, some-thing on the order of pro.Lehman & Van Bik: Lai Chin personal pronouns 8 5The alternative hypothesis remains distinctly possible: that (25) is more ade-quately represented as meaning something like 'one's button', where the proxi-mal reading is an implicature from the fact that the speaker is understood as thereferent of 'one' — as in French, where on not infrequently is interpreted with afirst person, singular referent, by pragmatic implicature, even though it actuallymeans 'one' ('one', as proarb, ranging disjointly over all persons and numbers).On that view, it is the unspecified demonstrative element in (25) that is empty insuch demonstrative 'adjectives'. This solution patterns with the fact (cf. (13) -(15)) that specified possessive 'adjectives' properly include -main (or -nih).Nothing much hangs on which of the two hypotheses one is forced tochoose, and in fact the problem is rather general, if one considers, for instance, thefact that in English and many other languages demonstratives often surface as'demonstrative pronouns', as in(26) This is my theory.NOTES' As always, the senior author is indebted to his friend and colleague Lian UkB.A., LL.B. for advice, additional examples and other help in this and all my workon Lai Chin language and culture. This note is based upon discussions betweenthe authors and Professor George Bedell of the International Christian University,Tokyo, during SEALS VI (Southeast Asian Linguistic Society), at the Universityof Oregon, in May, 1996.2It is an interesting question well beyond the scope of the present note why weseem unable to have *keinih accepted, whilst the first person plural contrast (12)is fine.REFERENCESCHOMSKY, Noam. 1995. The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.HAYE-NEAVE, D. R. 1948. Lai Chin Grammar and Dictionary. Rangoon: Su-perintendent of Government Printing and Stationery, Burma.LEHMAN, F. K. 1973. Some remarks on the grammar of topic and comment inBurmese. Paper for the Vlth International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Lan-guages and Linguistics.LEHMAN, F. K. 1978. A brief note on the reconstruction of *ma? in Tibeto-Burman. Studies in the Linguistic Sciences 7:2.24-38.LEHMAN, F. K. 1985a. Cognition and computation. Directions in Cognitive An-thropology, ed. by Janet W. D. Dougherty, 19-48. Urbana: University of Illi-nois Press.LEHMAN, F. K. 1985b. Ergativity and the nominal-verbal cycle: Internal recon-struction in Burmese. Proceedings of the Conference on Participant Roles,South Asia and Adjacent Areas, ed. by Arlene R. K. Zide, David Magier, &Eric Schiller, 71-81. Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club.86 Studies in the Linguistic Sciences 27:2 (Fall 1997)LEHMAN, F. K. 1986. Missing nominals, non-specificity and related matters. Stud-ies in the Linguistic Sciences 15:2.101-21.LEHMAN, F. K. [Forthcoming]. Problems for an account of Mizo (and Lai Chin)case marking in minimalist syntax. Proceedings of the Sixth Annual Meet-ing of the Southeast Asian Linguistic Society [1996]. Tempe: Arizona StateUniversity Program on Southeast Asian Studies, Monograph Series.POSTAL, Paul M. 1970. On so-called 'pronouns' in English. Readings in EnglishTransformational Grammar, ed. by R. A. Jacobs & P. S. Rosenbaum, 56-82.Waltham, MA: Ginn and Co.VAN BIK, David. 1986. English-Chin (Haka) Dictionary. Haka, Chin State,Burma: Privately printed.

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