Proto-Indo-European got along without 3rd person pronouns. But what
about getting rid of first or second person pronouns instead? Or both?
One could have a language that lacks grammatical person entirely; or,
perhaps more interestingly, one could have a language that lacks the
1st and 2nd person pronouns, but still retains grammatical person in
things like verb conjugation (maybe explainable as a creole).
As PIE got along along using demonstratives instead of the usual 3rd
person pronouns, one could replace 1st and 2nd person pronouns using
phrases based on words for speaker and addressee. 'I', for example,
could be "this speaker", and 'you' could be "the (current) addressee".
Those are not, however, exactly equivalent to the usual pronouns
because the same words could be used to refer to different people in
other contexts- "the speaker/addressee in that other conversation",
for example.
-l.
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