In developing a new language, choosing the words is a complex process which often requires some time and experimentation before a final choice is made. Because a language is a vast, interconnected web, a word cannot be chosen in isolation but must satisfy some criteria governed by other words. A good illustration of the process of choosing words is provided by the case of the personal pronouns.
At the outset it was decided that the words for the personal pronouns should
1. be short words of the form CV, CyV or CwV
2. begin with a distinctive consonant for each of the three persons (first, second, third)
3. not be equal to a syllable which begins a large number of vocabulary words (in order to avoid oronyms)
4. fit smoothly phonetically into the common contexts for pronouns, eg. following a verb ending in –ts or following a link beginning with j-.
The easiest pronoun words to choose were those for the second person. vu, taken from French, is an excellent choice for the singular form because essentially no internationally-used words begin with this syllable. voy, taken from Italian, is also a good choice for the plural form because few words begin with this syllable.
Settling on a good choice for the first-person pronouns required somewhat more effort and experimentation. In our list of twenty-nine principal Indo-European languages ‘j’ (usually pronounced as the English ‘y’) is the overwhelming preference for the initial consonant in the nominative case and ‘m’ the nearly universal preference in the accusative case. (Ayola has no cases and uses the same word as subject and object.) Initially we tried ‘mi’, taken from Esperanto, but it proved to be seriously problematic because so many internationally-used words begin with the syllable ‘mi-’. Then we tried ‘jo’, which is close to the words used in Italian and Spanish, but it proved to be awkward following verbs and links in phrases and sentences such as the following:
* la fotografuro ja jo the photograph of (owned/used by) me
* Vu vidits jo. You saw me.
Recently, we have finally settled on myo as the Ayola word for ‘I/me’. It contains a blend of the characteristic ‘m’ and ‘y’ consonants and fits smoothly in common contexts as illustrated above.
la fotografuro ja myo
Vu vidits myo.
In analogy with voy, moy is a natural choice as the word for ‘we/us’, making m the characteristic beginning consonant of the first person.
The characteristic initial consonant d for the third-person pronouns was suggested by Loglan. Natural languages make three distinctions in the third-person pronouns:
1. animate vs. inanimate (e.g., he/she vs. it)
2. masculine vs. feminine (e.g., he vs. she)
3. first vs. second mention (done in some Native American languages, etc.)
After much discussion and experimentation, we decided that to make all three of these distinctions would make the set of third-person pronouns too large and cumbersome, so we decided on the first and third as the most important. Note that, in modern usage, users of English and other languages are doing away with the gender distinction by using such constructions as he/she.
Here is the current list of the personal pronouns in Ayola:
| 1st |
myo
|
I/me
|
moy
|
we/us
|
| 2nd |
vu
|
you (singular)
|
voy
|
you (plural)
|
| 3rd #1 |
dya
|
he/she #1, him/her #1
|
dyay
|
they (people) #1
|
| |
dwa
|
it #1
|
dway
|
they (things) #1
|
| 3rd #2 |
dyo
|
he/she #2, him/her #2
|
dyoy
|
they (people) #2
|
| |
dwo
|
it #2
|
dwoy
|
they (things) #2
|
The second-mention third-person pronouns are sometimes referred to in literature as the fourth-person pronouns.
Note also a distinction between the first/second-person and the third-person plural forms. Although the latter are formed regularly from the singular forms, the former are not. There is an underlying reason for this. The first-person plural form may sometimes denote a true plural entity of first persons (members of a group speaking jointly) but more commonly denotes a combination of first and second persons (I/me + you), first and third persons (I/me + he/him/she/her/they/them), or all three persons. Similarly, the second-person plural form may sometimes denote a true plural entity of second persons (members of a group addressed) but may also denote a combination of second and third persons (you + he/him/she/her/they/them). In contrast, the third-person plural forms only denote true plural entities of third persons. Thus, moy and voy, while clearly recognizable in Ayola as denoting plural entities, are elementary words and are not derived by pluralizing singular forms. It is interesting to note that the Romance languages (although not the Germanic ones) essentially follow the same practice, so that at least some natural languages recognize a basic distinction between what is denoted by the first/second-person plural forms and what is denoted by the third-person plural forms.