Re: He, she and it against hem

António Marques <m.ap@xxxxxxx> writes:

> 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.

"I" is the predicate marker. To put it simply, it is always used in
SG3 and PL (except for inclusive PL1) and also when a constituent is
inserted between the subject and the predicate. Apparently the form
comes from the English "he" and the usage from substrate languages
(but I can't remember where I read these claims).
.