Declensions of Pronouns – 6

Finally, we come to the very important inflections or, in a way, the roots of all inflections, the flex stems. Some grammarians call them crude forms, others call them just stems; and stems they indeed are. And since they are the very stems of all inflections, it would be more appropriate to call them inflection stems or, to be more succint, just flex stems as I like to call them.

Hindi flex stems are very elementary, those of Marathi are much more developed, but pardon me for the feeling that the flex stems of Konkani, or at least of the Konkani I speak, are even more defined and refined! And I see that Konkani has a very rich grammar. However, due to the fact that, in her recent history, she has suffered from neglect and disfavour, she is unfortunately lagging behind in her vocabulary. Yet that should not prompt people to just pluck words from Marathi and Sanskrit and spray them freely and raw into Konkani texts, for that would be the surest way to kill Amchi Bhas.

The importance of flex stems lies in the fact that they are indispensable when using postpositions. In this connection, let me repeat here once again that in Konkani there are no prepositions; instead, we have postpositions. The same, in fact, is the case with most, or perhaps all, Sanskritic languages. Such an inversion is a part of the Indian style. For instance, “Auntie Catherine” sounds perfect in English, but if you want to say that in Konkani, you don’t say, “Mavxi Catherine” but “Kotrin Mavxi“.

 Do you notice the inverted positioning of the key word, mavxi? It is the same with prepositions. Let us take the phrase, “under the tree.” The word under is called a preposition, because it precedes the word that it governs, i.e., “tree”. The prefix pre in “preposition” stands for ‘before’. If you translate the same phrase into Konkani, you would have to say, “zhadda pondak“. Notice that the word for “under”, i.e., “pondak“, doesn’t precede but follows the word that it governs, viz., “zhadda“. So it cannot be called a preposition. And since it instead follows the word zhadda, it is called a postposition. “Post” means “after”.

Notice also that we don’t say, “zhadd pondak“. Zhadd is a nominative and it cannot be used as such with a postposition. It has to be transformed into its flex stem, and the flex stem of the singular of zhadd is zhadda. Hence: zhadda pondak. It is the same with pronouns as well: when they are used with (and before) postpositions, they have to be transformed into their flex stems. Here are the flex stems of all the pronouns:

	Singular		Plural
1st Person	Mhojê	… me	Amchê	… us
2nd Person	Tujê	… thee	Tumchê	… you
3rd Person masc.	Tachê	… him	Tanchê	… them
3rd Person fem.	Tichê	… her
3rd Person neut.	Tachê	… it/her

Example:
To tichê koddê uloita

 = He is talking to her.