FromProto-Cariban*apina. CompareTrióanja,Wayanaemna,Waiwaiamna.
nña
While most personal pronouns are optional in contexts where nouns, verbs, and postpositions already have personal prefixes,nña is obligatory, as there is no such prefix unique to the first-person exclusive dual; it normally uses third-person prefixes instead, but, in portmanteau prefixes indicating both a second-person and first-person(-dual-exclusive) agent and patient, it instead uses prefixes indistinguishable from those used with the first person.
Hall gives this as both the first-person exclusive dual and plural pronoun, whereas Cáceres initially claims that there is no first-person exclusive plural pronoun, but later contrarily providesnña as the first-person exclusive pronoun used with plural verb forms in her conjugation charts.
Verbs agreeing with this pronoun take singular agreement when the pronoun’s meaning is dual and (following the conjugation charts in Cáceres 2011) plural agreement when plural.
| singular | dual | plural | |
|---|---|---|---|
| first person exclusive | ewüY,üwüD | nña | nña |
| first person inclusive | — | küwü | künwanno |
| second person | amödöY,ömödöD | — | önwanno |
| third person | tüwü | — | tünwanno |
Y Caura River dialect
D Cunucunuma River dialect