Almean UG?

[Frislander]

I've noticed a little theme in a number of Almean languages regarding the encoding of reference, namely that there seems to be no requirement for there to be unambiguous personal pronouns, something I've noticed with Munkhâshi, Bhöɣetan and Elkarîl, but which I can't see attested anywhere in IRL human languages (the closest I can think of are the complex "open" pronominal systems of East Asia, but even there many of the various pronominal forms are unambiguous as to which person they refer to). So I wonder; if Almean linguists were to develop a theory of Universal Grammar, would it be reasonable to assume that they would have at least have a somewhat different baseline for what to include (e.g. they would probably not have the same ideas of what are required "features" for persons).

Alternatively, even ignoring the whole question of the validity of UG as a theory, if an Almean language can lack forms that make any kind of direct reference to speech act participants, doesn't this have implications more generally for the psychological differences between Almeans and Humans?

[zompist]

I've noticed a little theme in a number of Almean languages regarding the encoding of reference, namely that there seems to be no requirement for there to be unambiguous personal pronouns, something I've noticed with Munkhâshi, Bhöɣetan and Elkarîl, but which I can't see attested anywhere in IRL human languages (the closest I can think of are the complex "open" pronominal systems of East Asia, but even there many of the various pronominal forms are unambiguous as to which person they refer to).

This came up before, and I provided some RW precedents:

viewtopic.php?p=51940#p51940

I've heard claims that Japanese has no pronouns; at the least it's an example of pronouns being etymologically transparent (and as I noted in the linked post, sometimes deictic). Japanese is also noted for using titles as pronouns; these, like Munkhâshi, are the same for all speakers in a scenario. We use this with kinship terms sometimes: "Mama is really busy right now; go play with Daddy."

So I wonder; if Almean linguists were to develop a theory of Universal Grammar, would it be reasonable to assume that they would have at least have a somewhat different baseline for what to include (e.g. they would probably not have the same ideas of what are required "features" for persons).

Sure. There is a good case to be made that certain earthly theories are way too IE-centric and even Anglocentric...

Alternatively, even ignoring the whole question of the validity of UG as a theory, if an Almean language can lack forms that make any kind of direct reference to speech act participants, doesn't this have implications more generally for the psychological differences between Almeans and Humans?

I don't think UG is a thing, or more precisely, we won't know if it's a thing till we know a lot more about the brain, or meet some aliens. Chomsky's methodology for UG is highly suspect.

As a minor point, elcari are not humans, and I wanted to make Elkarîl seem non-human, and not just by Marc Okrand's trick of using Amerindian features.

I sometimes stretch the natural models, but not I think to the breaking point. Any discussion of universals should recognize how many human languages have been lost, and how historically contingent our current set of languages are, even more so the set of languages that are well-described. And how batshit insane the features can be in some individual languages.