Dual in Independent Personal Pronouns (Feature 14)
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Feature Annotation
Is there a distinction between plural and dual in (independent) personal pronouns? In most European languages, there is no such distinction, and words like we, you and they can be used with two or more referents. The distinction is made, for instance, in Bislama: yufala ‘you all’, yutufala ‘you two’.
Note that we are only interested in grammaticalized distinctions. All languages can make the distinction by lexical means (e.g. English we two vs. we all), of course.
Additional remarks
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Values
| Value | Value Annotation | |
| 1 | No special dual form | Haitian Creole, Sranan, Principense, many other creoles/pidgins, and almost all European languages |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | Dual form in all three persons | Bislama mifala/yufala/ol (pl) vs. mitufala/yutufala/tufala (du) ‘we/you/they’ |
| 3 | Dual form in some but not all persons | |
WALS No.
(None)
