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The category of possession is build up the same way as the personal suffixes for verbs. So, the category features three numbers (singular, dual and plural) and three persons: speaker, person addressed and a third person. The third person itself divides itself into the main categories animated and inanimated, dividing the first category into three other subcategories, masculine, feminine and a neutral person. This neutral person is either used to indicate a person of unknown gender / sex or is used to refer to person who do not identify themselves as masculine or feminine. From a etymological perspective this suffix arose from a mixture of the masculine /-m/ and feminine suffix /-f/ giving a preform *-mf which later developped into *-mp and finally losing the nasal part giving ''-p'' as a fully productive personal suffix which can be combined with various other persons. | The category of possession is build up the same way as the personal suffixes for verbs. So, the category features three numbers (singular, dual and plural) and three persons: speaker, person addressed and a third person. The third person itself divides itself into the main categories animated and inanimated, dividing the first category into three other subcategories, masculine, feminine and a neutral person. This neutral person is either used to indicate a person of unknown gender / sex or is used to refer to person who do not identify themselves as masculine or feminine. From a etymological perspective this suffix arose from a mixture of the masculine /-m/ and feminine suffix /-f/ giving a preform *-mf which later developped into *-mp and finally losing the nasal part giving ''-p'' as a fully productive personal suffix which can be combined with various other persons. | ||
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: center;" | |||
|+ Basic suffixes of the possessive suffixes | |||
!colspan ="2" | category | |||
!suffix | |||
|- | |||
||singular | |||
|| Ø | |||
|- | |||
||dual | |||
||-t | |||
|- | |||
||plural | |||
||-s | |||
|- | |||
||1. person | |||
||-b | |||
|- | |||
||2. person formal | |||
||-r | |||
|- | |||
||2. person informal | |||
||-l | |||
|- | |||
||3.person | |||
! rowspan ="3" colspan "1" | animate | |||
!masculine | |||
||-m | |||
|- | |||
||3. person feminine | |||
|- | |||
||3. person neutral | |||
||-p < *mp < *mf | |||
|- | |||
! rowspan ="1" colspan ="1" |inanimate | |||
||3. person object | |||
||-n | |||
|} | |||
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: center;" | {| class="wikitable" style="text-align: center;" |
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