Clusivity Totally Explained

Everything about Clusivity totally explained

In linguistics, clusivity is a distinction between inclusive and exclusive first-person pronouns and verbal morphology, also called inclusive "we" and exclusive "we". Inclusive "we" specifically includes the addressees (that is, one of the words for "we" means "you and I"), while exclusive "we" specifically excludes them (that is, another word for "we" means "he/she and I"), regardless of who else may be involved. Clusivity is a common feature among Australian and Austronesian languages, and is also found in eastern, southern, and southwestern Asia, America, and in some creole languages. No European language makes this distinction grammatically, but some constructions may be semantically inclusive or exclusive.

Schematic paradigm

Clusivity paradigms may be summarized as a two-by-two grid:

		Includes the addressee?
		Yes	No
Includes the speaker?	Yes	Inclusive we	Exclusive we
Includes the speaker?	No	2nd person	3rd person

Where found

The inclusive-exclusive distinction is nearly universal among the Austronesian languages and the languages of northern Australia, but rare in the Papuan languages in between. (Tok Pisin, an English-Melanesian pidgin, generally has the inclusive-exclusive distinction, but this varies with the speaker's language background.) It is widespread in India (among the Dravidian and Munda languages, as well as in the Indo-European languages of Marathi, Rajasthani, and Gujarati), and the languages of eastern Siberia, such as Evenki. In America it's found in about half the languages, with no clear geographic or genealogical pattern. It is also found in a few languages of the Caucasus and Sub-Saharan Africa, such as Fulani and Nama.
No European language makes this distinction grammatically, but some constructions may be semantically inclusive or exclusive, as in the English and French examples below.

English

English distinguishes let's from let us; the contracted form is inclusive while the full form is generally exclusive.

For example, the "us" in "(come on,) let's eat" and "(hurry up,) let's go" can only be inclusive, while context and prosody make it clear that the "us" in "let us eat" (= leave us alone) and "let us go" (= release us) is exclusive.

French

In French, nous autres (literally we others) can be used for exclusive we instead of just nous or on. The same is true for noialtri in Italian.

Dravidian languages

The distinction between the inclusive and exclusive we existed in proto-Dravidian, and has been retained in most modern Dravidian languages. In Tamil, the forms are inclusive நாம் (nām) and exclusive நாங்கள் (nāṅkaḷ). In Telugu, the forms are inclusive మనము (manamu) and exclusive మేము (memu). In Malayalam, നമ്മള് (nammaḷ) is the inclusive form of we while ഞങ്ങള് (ñaṅṅaḷ) is exclusive. Modern Kannada is the only one of the literary Dravidian languages that doesn't retain the distinction, though ನಂಗಳ (namgaLa), the exclusive we, is used in haLegannada and naDugannada (old and pre-modern Kannada, respectively). The urban, spoken form of Kannada makes use of just ನಮ್ಮ (namma), making no distinction. Certain dialects of Kannada like Sankethi retain the exclusive form, as does spoken rural Kannada.

Viet-Muong languages

Vietnamese makes a distinction between inclusive and exclusive we. Among the many Vietnamese pronouns there are chúng ta (inclusive) and chúng tôi (exclusive). Chúng is a plural marker derived from Chinese; ta is the word for "I" used in familiar settings, whereas tôi also means "I" but is used in polite settings.

Chinese languages

In standard Mandarin, the pronoun wǒmen 我們 "we", which is the plural of the pronoun wǒ 我 "I", is indefinite like its English counterpart. However, in northern Mandarin dialects there's an additional pronoun, zánmen 咱們, which is inclusive. In these dialects, wǒmen 我們 is exclusive. (See also: Chinese pronouns.) Taiwanese is similar. Exclusive goán is the plural of goá "I", while inclusive lán is a separate root also with the plural suffix. Lán may be used to express politeness or solidarity, as in asking a stranger "where do we live?" to mean "where do you live?".

Austronesian languages

In Malay and Indonesian, the pronoun kita is inclusive, and kami is exclusive. That is, you may say "We (kami) will go shopping, and then we (kita) will eat," making it clear that your guest isn't to accompany you to the market, but is invited to dinner. What you can't do is be ambiguous as to whether your guest is included, as you can in English. Tagalog has a very similar system with kamí and táyo being respectively the exclusive and inclusive forms. The word kitá (or katá) was originally a dual inclusive pronoun "you and I". However, it has now become a portmanteau pronoun for first plus second person, as in mahál kitá "I love you", originally "you and I are dear."
In other Philippine languages, particularly those spoken in northern Luzon, the use of the dual pronoun is widely used. Kapampangan, for example, has ikata (dual inclusive), ikatamu (plural inclusive), and ikami (exclusive). Ilokano has data/sita, datayo/sitayo, and dakami/sikami. Tausug of Sulu is the only Visayan language which has the dual form. Its pronouns are kita (dual inclusive), kitaniyu (plural inclusive), and kami (exclusive). Tetum, spoken in East Timor, uses ami and ita, which correspond to kami and kita in Malay and Indonesian.

American languages

In Quechua, both forms, inclusive ñuqanchik and exclusive ñuqayku, are clearly based on the first-person singular pronoun ñuqa, but it isn't immediately clear how they relate historically to the second-person pronoun qam or the plural suffix -kuna. Aymara has four pronominal roots: Inclusive jiwasa, exclusive naya, second person juma, and third person jupa. All are indefinite as to number apart from jiwasa, which must refer to at least two people. Plurality may be emphasized with the suffix -naka; inclusive jiwasanaka implies at least three people. Verbal conjugations reflect the same four persons.
Other Amerindian languages that make the distinction are the Tupian languages, among them Tupinambá, Guaraní and Nheengatu. In these languages there's a singular first person (xe in Tupinambá, ixé in Nheengatu, che in Guarani) and two alternate plural forms: oré (exclusive) and îandé (Tupi) or ñandé (Guarani). The inclusive form may have been formed under influence of the singular first person (which is nde in most languages of the group). Additionally, all Algonquian languages make a distinction between first person plural inclusive and exclusive. For example, in Shawnee, the first person plural exclusive independent pronoun is niilawe, the corresponding inclusive pronoun is kiilawe, while the first person singular pronoun is niila and the second person singular pronoun is kiila. The inclusive/exclusive distinction is also made throughout the pronominal inflection of verbs in all Algonquian languages.
The Isthmus-Mecayapan dialect of Nahuatl makes a distinction between first person plural inclusive and exclusive. This is unique in Nahuatl, and may have been borrowed from the neighboring Popoluca (Mixe-Zoquean) languages, which have the distinction.

Fula language

The Fula language (Fulfulde, Pulaar, Pular) of West Africa has inclusive and exclusive first person plurals.

Chechen language

The Chechen language spoken in the Caucasus has exclusive and inclusive "we" (txo and vay).

Pidgins

The Chinese pattern, with the plural form of "I" as the exclusive pronoun, is a common one. It is also common for the inclusive pronoun to be composed of the pronouns for "I" and "you". Both are the case in the English-Melanesian-based creole languages Tok Pisin and Bislama, where the inclusive pronoun is a variant of yumi (two people, that is, you + me) or yumipla (for more than two people; -pla or -pela is a plural suffix), and the exclusive pronoun is the plural of "me": mipla.

Morphology

In some languages, the three first-person pronouns appear to be unrelated. This is the case for Chechen, which has singular so, exclusive txo, and inclusive vai. In others, all three are related, as in Tok Pisin singular mi, exclusive mi-pela, and inclusive yu-mi (a compound of mi with yu "you") or yu-mi-pela. However, when only one of the plural pronouns is related to the singular, it may be either one. In Chinese, for example, exclusive wǒ-men is the plural form of singular wǒ "I", while inclusive zá-men is a separate root. However, in Hadza it's the inclusive, ’one-be’e, which is the plural of the singular ’ono (’one-) "I", while the exclusive ’oo-be’e is a separate root. In Vietnamese both are pluralized words for "I", familiar becoming inclusive and polite becoming exclusive.

Distinction in verbs

Where verbs are inflected for person, as in Australia and much of America, the inclusive-exclusive distinction is made there as well. For example, in Passamaquoddy "I/we have it" is expressed � Singular n-tíhin (first person prefix n-)

Exclusive n-tíhin-èn (first person n- + plural suffix -èn) � Inclusive k-tíhin-èn (inclusive prefix k- + plural -èn)

Singular we

There is an interesting twist with inclusive pronouns in Samoan. In this language, as in the related languages Malay and Tagalog, there are two separate roots for "we", inclusive ’ita and exclusive ’ima. Unlike in those languages, the Samoan pronouns must be used with the dual suffix -’ua or the plural suffix -tou to mean "we".

Samoan pronouns	singular	dual	plural
Exclusive person	a’u	’ima’ua	’imatou
Inclusive person	’ita	’ita’ua	’itatou
Second person	’oe	’oulua	’outou
Third person	ia	’ila’ua	’ilatou

However, the inclusive pronoun ’ita may also occur on its own as a singular pronoun. In this case it means "I", but with a connotation of appealing or asking for indulgence, rather like the concept of amae in Japanese (and not like the royal we in English). That is, by using ’ita instead of the normal word for "I", a’u, there's involvement the other person in statements about yourself.

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