Page 533 - A GRAMMAR OF BHOJPURI _ PhD Dissertation 2020 TU

14.2.1 Personal pronouns
Person, number, honorificity and case roles are categories of the Bhojpuri

pronouns (Grierson 1884a:14-7, Ojha 1915[1982]:18-9, Tiwari 1960:126-32 and
1984:440-7, Nirbhik 1975:48, Tripathy 1987:92-3, Shrivastava 1999:48-9, Sharma and
Ashk 2007:10-1, Thakur 2011:66-8 and Singh 2013:55). There are three persons: first,

second and third; two numbers: singular and plural and three degrees of honorificity:
non-honorific, mid-honorific and honorific. Regarding the gender, pronouns are not

suffixed or take any other particles for gender, rather, the gender of a personal pronoun
is fixed by gender suffix with the finite verbs. Likewise, the case roles are generally

classified by suffixing the nominative/agentive case for other case roles. Such suffixes
are also attached with the pronouns in nominative case to change them into accusative,

dative and possessive cases only. The other case roles are fixed by postpositional
morphemes in Bhojpuri, as nominals do, already described in Chapter 6. The personal
pronouns in Bhojpuri refer deictically to the speech-act participants. Personal pronouns

are free standing and take case markers and postpositions in the same way as do the full
noun phrases. Personal pronouns in Bhojpuri in nominative, accusative, dative and

possessive case roles are presented in the tables below:
Table 14.1 Personal pronouns in Bhojpuri: First person

Case Singular Plural
Nominative हम /ɦʌm/ हमनी /ɦʌmni/, ह"मन /ɦʌmmʌn/

Accusative हमे /ɦʌme/, हम के /ɦʌm ke/, हमनी के /ɦʌmni ke/, ह"मन के /ɦʌmmʌn

हमरा के /ɦʌmrɑ ke/ ke/, हमरनी के /ɦʌmrʌni ke/

Dative हमे /ɦʌme/, हम के /ɦʌm ke/, हमनी के /ɦʌmni ke/, ह"मन के /ɦʌmmʌn

हमरा के /ɦʌmrɑ ke/, हमरा ke/, हमनी ला/खाितर /ɦʌmni lɑ/kʰɑtir/,

ला/खाितर /ɦʌmrɑ lɑ/kʰɑtir/ ह"मन ला/खाितर /ɦʌmmʌn lɑ/kʰɑtir/

Possessive हमार /ɦʌmɑr/, हमर /ɦʌmʌr/ हमनी के /ɦʌmni ke/, ह"मन के /ɦʌmmʌn ke/
Going through Table 14.1, we observe that first person pronouns in Bhojpuri are

irrespective of honorificity because the finite verb in a clause is always take full honorific
marker. Likewise, they never take any gender-marker ulike Hindi, as shown in (1a-b):

(1) a. हम *कसान के बेटा बानी ।

ɦʌm kisɑn ke beʈɑ bɑni
1SG farmer GEN son be.PRES.H

505