Wiktionary:About Kara (New Guinea)
Kara, also called Lemakot, is an Austronesian language spoken in Papua New Guinea.
It has a large number of pronouns:
weak pronouns | singular | dual | trial | plural |
---|---|---|---|---|
1st exclusive | ne | maame | maatul | maam |
1st inclusive | — | taare | tutul | taara |
2nd person | no | me | mutul | mi |
3rd person | a / i | re | rutul | ri |
Weak subject pronouns are used in verb clauses, usually immediately preceding the verb: ne fo xel "I have called (summoned)". They are sometimes omitted (especially the third-person singular). Groups of three may be referred to with either the trial or the plural forms.
Matthew S. Dryer, in A grammatical description of Kara-Lemakot, notes that in the third person singular (only), there is a contrast in the weak subject pronouns between completive a and incompletive i. "The incompletive weak subject pronoun i is used after the future irrealis particle rao and before" certain preverbal particles, in future or irrealis environments (including in the continuative, which "Perry Schlie (pc) points out [...] is irrealis in the sense that the action is not completed at the reference time of the event").
strong pronouns | singular | dual | trial | plural |
---|---|---|---|---|
1st exclusive | nenia | nemaame | nemaatul | nemaam |
1st inclusive | — | netaare | netaatul | netaara |
2nd person | nano | name | namutul | nami |
3rd person | nane | nare / narie | narutul | nari |
There is also an interrogative pronoun nase' "who".
The strong pronouns "occur as noun phrases functioning in subject or object position" and "almost always have human reference. They have two primary uses. One is for objects of a verb[. ...] The second primary use is for subjects, where they optionally co-occur with a weak subject pronoun. The strong pronoun apparently occurs in the position where nominal subjects occur while the weak subject pronoun occurs in the verbal complex."