Declensions of Pronouns – 2

In most languages, the direct object of a transitive verb takes the accusative case. In some languages the noun or pronoun that follows a preposition may also have to be in the accusative. The latter, though, isn’t the case with Konkani. (Of course, in the first place, Konkani doesn’t even have prepositions: she has postpositions instead; and in Konkani the postpositions require the previous word to be a flex stem rather than an independent case.  I shall deal with this later.)

However, in Konkani the accusative (direct animate object) and the dative (indirect object) are identical in form.  E.g., mhaka  

  (me, to me) can be a direct object (hence accusative) e.g. of marunk  (to beat), as in “ti mhaka marta  (she beats me)”. And mhaka can also be an indirect object (hence dative), e.g., of diunk  (to give), as in “to mhaka ambo dita   (he gives me a mango, i.e., he gives a mango to me).”

I have said above that animate accusative has the same form as the dative.  That needs to be further elaborated. When the direct object of a sentence is animate (human or an animal or an inanimate object that we want to personify), we use the dative form, while if the direct object is inanimate, we use the nominative form.

Examples: Hanv tika (dative form) ghorant haddtam  

 = I am bringing her into the house.
Hanv tem (nominative form) ghorant haddtam   = I am bringing it (e.g. a spade)  into the house (See Note 3 below).

The above illustrated difference in treatement between animate and inanimate objects applies not just to pronouns but to nouns as well. However, in the case of pronouns, since the first and second persons are always considered as animate — and even if they are inanimate, they are ipso facto personified — when they are used as direct objects they always take the dative form. The differential treatment therefore applies only to the third person, singular and plural.

Here are the datives/animate accusatives of personal pronouns:

	Singular		Plural
1st Person	mhaka	me, to me	amkam	us, to us
2nd Person	tuka	thee, to thee	tumkam	you, to you
3rd Person masc.	taka	him, to him	tankam	them, to them
3rd Person fem.	tika	her, to her
3rd Person neut.	taka	it, to it

 

Note:

1.  In the above table, the word thee (although it is archaic) is used, instead of you, just to indicate that it is the singular you.

2.  Distinctions between he, she and it are not the same as in English. In Konkani, on the one hand, even inanimate objects can be masculine, feminine or neuter, while on the other, the neuter can refer to humans as well, i.e., little girls and sometimes even adult women (though not to boys or men). Hence the genders of Konkani words are to be learned along with the words themselves, as a part of the vocabulary.

3. In connection with one of the examples above, I would like to note that, just as in English we distinguish between a house and a home, a similar difference also exists between ghor  

 and ghara  . For example, Hanv ghara vetam   means “I’m going home”, while Hanv ghorant vetam   means, “I’m going into the house”.