Re: He, she and it against hem

Aidan Kehoe wrote:

Tok Pisin doesn’t--cf.
http://www.une.edu.au/langnet/tokpisin.htm#grammar-hce .


Interesting. I couldn't help but notice

Ben bai i wok tumora.  'Ben will work tomorrow.'

where bai looks suspiciously like portuguese vai 'is-going-to'.
While i, by its behaviour, might be from portuguese ai´ (french y),
which is a simple deictic in portuguese but widely abused in brazilian.

Incidentally, can anyone give a sensible spelling for «'em», now we
know it's not a reduction of 'them'?

’em is fine for spelling a reduction of “hem” ... 

So hem is what 'should' be used? Blow hem up?

and I wouldn’t be in a hurry to rule out the analysis of it as a
reduction of “them,” today. My argument would be a lot stronger if I
could rustle up an example of [æt] for “that”, but right now that’s
not happening.


In fact, english doesn't seem to exhibit a lot of reductions of th-.
--
am

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