The Use of Matrix Technique in an Analysis of Atta Personal Pronouns

Abstract

All Philippine languages have multiple pronoun sets, differing in distribution within the clause, and differing in internal complexity. Traditionally, pronoun sets have been listed and their distribution stated, but few attempts have been made to describe their internal structuring. Smearing of morpheme boundaries has made conventional morpheme analysis of the pronouns a difficult and often unproductive exercise. It will be demonstrated in this paper, however, that by using the techniques of matrix permutation and conflation, the ranking of pronouns and a display of their internal structure is entirely possible. The purpose of this paper is, first, to demonstrate how this was accomplished for the Atta pronouns, and second, to show how on the basis of these matrices meanings can be attributed to each of the pronoun formatives.