>Glen: What do Neanderthals have to do with anything here??
>
>Gerry responds: Now that's silly. Someone needs to speak the language
>before a language can have an identity.

Let's be clear. I'm not going to get dragged into a totally stupid
conversation about Neanderthals. Your reasoning's so far out into left field
that I can only assume you have been neglecting to take you medication
lately. Seriously. Utterly, pathetically ridiculous. Don't bother me with it
again. It's not relevant to anything we're talking about.

>Oh, Dear Glennie. I thought by the term "word class prefixes" you were
>referring to the word "class" as in aristocratic vs worker vs slave etc.

"Word class" is a common linguistic term that you should familiarize
yourself with.

>Interesting. What possibly could be the fourth person in Navajo?

Again, the "obviative" or "fourth person" is a linguistic term you need
to familiarize yourself with. It might be more clearly described as
the second of two third persons. If we have two people, Bill and John, we
refer to both of them as "he" or "him" in English. So if we say that
"John went to Bill's house.", we may replace everything with third person
pronouns to get "He went to his house." However, we then have trouble
distinguishing between "he" (John) and "he" (Bill). In NaDene languages
and some Algonquian languages, this is resolved by using differing pronouns
for "he" depending on whether one is refering to John or Bill.


- gLeN


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