Na'vi/Pronouns

Naʼvi pronouns include personal pronouns, used for persons and other animate nouns, and demonstrative pronouns, used for inanimate nouns and to distinguish "this" from "that".

Personal pronouns
Naʼvi personal pronouns encode. That is, there are different words for "we" depending on whether the speaker is including the person spoken to or not. There are also special forms for "the two of us" (oeng "you & me", moe "s/he & me"), "the three of us", etc. Pronouns do not inflect for gender; although it's possible to distinguish "he" from "she", the distinction is optional.


 * {| class=wikitable

! Pronouns!! !! !! !! (4+)!!generic ! ! ! ! !
 * óe||móe||pxóe||ayóe||rowspan=4|fko
 * —||oéng||pxóeng||ayoéng, awngá
 * ngá||mengá||pxengá||ayngá
 * pó||mefó||pxefó||ayfó, fó
 * colspan=4|(use demonstratives)
 * }

Fo is the "short plural" form of po; ayfo is the explicit plural. Ayoeng (pronounced aywéng) and awnga are both contractions of the historical plural *ay-oe-nga.

"One" as a pronoun is fko:




 * Zéne||fko||n‹iv›úme||nì-txán
 * must||one||learn‹›||-much
 * }
 * "There is much to learn" (lit. "One must learn much")
 * "There is much to learn" (lit. "One must learn much")

Po can mean he, she, or it, but only if animate; for inanimate and abstract nouns, a demonstrative pronoun such as tsa (or tsaʼu, tsaw) "that" must be used. "He" and "she" can optionally be differentiated as poan and poe; this may be done to distinguish two referents in the same context, as normally both are translated simply as po. It is not known if the other pronouns can also do this.

The formal forms of "I" and "you" are óhe and ngengá, which likewise take the me- and ay- prefixes. The inclusive forms are derived from these with sì "and":


 * {| class=wikitable

! Formal!!sing.!!dual!!trial!!plural !Exclusive !Inclusive !2nd person
 * óhe||móhe||pxóhe||ayóhe
 * —||óhe ngengásì||móhe ngengásì, óhe mengengásì||(various combinations)
 * ngengá||mengengá||pxengengá||ayngengá
 * }

Generally when formal pronouns are used, the is inflected for formality as well.

Demonstrative pronouns
For pronouns and their compounds, such as fìʼu "this", tsaʼu ~ tsaw "that", and saʼu ~ saw "those", see the. Of the simple pronouns, *tsa can be used as an independent pronoun "that, it (inanimate)", but it does not occur in the intransitive case, and may be restricted in the grammatical roles it plays. Note that when demonstrative pronouns modify a noun, they may do so directly as "pre-nouns", in which case they indicate relative location: tsatute "that person", fìtute "this person".

Case
Pronouns inflect for as nouns do:


 * Oél ngáti kámeie


 * Oe-ìl || nga-ti || kam‹ei›e
 * I- || you- || See‹›
 * }
 * "I (am glad to) See you" (a greeting)
 * }
 * "I (am glad to) See you" (a greeting)

There are some changes in pronouns when case endings are added. The final vowel becomes e before the genitive -yä : oéyä "my", ayoéyä "our", ngéyä "thy", ayngéyä "your", péyä "her/his", féyä "their", awngeyä "our" (inclusive plural), ohengeyä "our" (formal inclusive dual; note that the sì is lost with inflection), etc.

The exclusive pronouns based on oe are generally contracted to when inflected for case, though they may remain  with careful enunciation. The inclusive pronouns based on oeng revert to their historical form *oe-nga when inflected, so that the ergative is oéngal, not xoengìl.

Although not all forms are attested, it appears that otherwise the inflections are the same as those on nouns.
 * {| class=wikitable

! !! !!  !! short  !! long !! !! short !! long !! ! Exclusive ! Inclusive ! 2nd person !3rd animate !3rd inanimate
 * oe || oel || ? || oeti || oeyä || oer || oeru || oeri
 * oeng || oengal || oengat || oengati || oengeyä? || awngar || awngaru || ?
 * nga || ngal || ngat || ngati || ngeyä || ngar || ngaru ||  ngari
 * po || pol  || pot || ? || peyä ||  por ||  poru || fìʼuri
 * tsaw || tsal  || tsat || tsati || tseyä ||  tsar || tsaru || tsari
 * }

Of the two forms of the inclusive plural, ayoeng and awnga, the latter is shorter when inflected: ergative ayoengal vs. awngal.

Pronouns also take adpositions, as in oehu, ngahu, pohu "with me, you, him/her", tsane "to it". Tsaw has the irregular form sat after the (non-leniting) preposition ftu: ftu sat "(away) from that".