Pronouns

[bloodyrosemccoy]

For all your conlangers and linguistics nerds, here’s an interesting breakdown of pronouns according to their antecedents in Venn diagram form. (I admit, the diagrams themselves were a little difficult for me to grasp at first—possibly because I had to translate the 2-D visualization from the Synesthesia Dimension where it’s been for me all my life.) And a place you can discuss it here.

In short, the OP has broken down exactly how many parties are referred to in each pronoun—“we,” for example, has several different uses:
-“I and you”
-“I and you and other(s)”
-“I and other(s) who are not you

Lotta work for one pronoun.

However, I do know of a language that fills out the Fig. 1 diagram almost perfectly—Hawaiian. I posted the breakdown in boring non-Venn form on the discussion, and here it is for you.

au - 1st singular (“I”)
kāua - 1st inclusive dual (“you and I”)
kākou - 1st inclusive plural (“you and I and George other(s)”)
māua - 1st exclusive dual (“s/he and I”)
mākou - 1st exclusive plural (“I and others who are not you”)
‘oe - 2nd singular (“thou”)
‘olua - 2nd dual (“you two”)
‘oukou - 2nd plural (“y'all”)
ia - 3rd singular (“s/he”; “it”)
lāua - 3rd dual (“they” for two)
lākou - 3rd plural (“they” for three or more)

I also very much like the demonstrative list at the end. I have done a lot of playing with the dimensions of demonstratives—abstract demonstratives (referring to nonphysical entities) and the difference between things that are actually there or absent, or whether it’s real or fictional. A few of my conlangs—:rimulet, for example—take distinctions like that to crazy extremes and have an entirely different set of actions for fictional or hypothetical scenarios—not an original idea, but one taken above and beyond.

Which is a lot of what conlanging is—you don’t need to be utterly alien in order to make something interesting and original.