Clusivity

Grammatical categories
Affect Polarity Agreement Animacy Argument/Complement/Adjunct Associated motion Associativity Boundedness Branching Classifier Clusivity Comparison Construct state Contrast Countability/Uncountability Dative construction/Quirky subject Dative shift Declension Definiteness Evidentiality Feature Focus Genitive construction Aspect Case Conjugation Grammatical gender/Noun class Mood Number Person Tense Honorifics Incorporation Inflection Lexical aspect (Aktionsart) Modality Markedness Mirativity Negation Pluractionality Polypersonal agreement Possession Predicate Reciprocity Serial verb construction Singulative-Collective-Pluractive Specificity Subject/Object Suffixaufnahme (Case stacking) Telicity Tense–aspect–mood Thematic relation (Agent/Patient) Topic and Comment Transitivity Valency Voice Volition

In linguistics, clusivity is a grammatical distinction between inclusive and exclusive first-person pronouns and verbal morphology, also called inclusive "we" and exclusive "we". Inclusive "we" specifically includes the addressee (that is, one of the words for "we" means "you and I and possibly others"), while exclusive "we" specifically excludes the addressee (that is, another word for "we" means "he/she/they and I, but not you"), regardless of who else may be involved. While imagining that this sort of distinction could be made in other persons (particularly the second) is straightforward, in fact the existence of second-person clusivity (you vs. you and them) in natural languages is controversial and not well attested.

The first published description of the inclusive-exclusive distinction by a European linguist was in a description of languages of Peru in 1560 by Domingo de Santo Tomás in his Grammatica o arte de la lengua general de los indios de los Reynos del Perú, published in Valladolid, Spain.

Schematic paradigm

Sets of reference: Inclusive form (left) and exclusive form (right)

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

		Includes the addressee?
		Yes	No
Includes the speaker?	Yes	Inclusive we	Exclusive we
	No	you	they

Morphology

In some languages, the three first-person pronouns appear to be unrelated. This is the case for Chechen, which has singular so/со, exclusive txo/тхо, and inclusive vay/вай. In others, all three are related, as in Tok Pisin (an English creole spoken in Papua New Guinea) 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 some dialects of Mandarin Chinese, for example, inclusive or exclusive 我們／我们 wǒmen is the plural form of singular wǒ "I", while inclusive 咱們／咱们 zánmen is a separate root. However, in Hadza it is 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.

It is not uncommon for two separate words for "I" to pluralize into derived forms having a clusivity distinction. For example, in Vietnamese the familiar word for "I" (ta) pluralizes to inclusive we (chúng ta) and the polite word for "I" (tôi) pluralizes into exclusive we (chúng tôi). In Samoan, the singular form of the exclusive pronoun is the regular word for "I", while the singular form of the inclusive pronoun may also occur on its own, in which case it also means "I", but with a connotation of appealing or asking for indulgence.

In the Kunama language of Eritrea, the first person inclusive and exclusive distinction is marked on dual and plural forms of verbs, independent pronouns, and possessive pronouns.

Distinction in verbs

Where verbs are inflected for person, as in Australia and much of America, the inclusive-exclusive distinction can be 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)

In Tamil on the other hand, the two different pronouns have the same agreement on the verb.

First-person clusivity

First-person clusivity is a common feature among Dravidian, Kartvelian, and Caucasian languages, Australian and Austronesian, and is also found in languages of eastern, southern, and southwestern Asia, Americas, and in some creole languages. Some African languages also make this distinction, such as the Fula language. No European language outside the Caucasus makes this distinction grammatically, but some constructions may be semantically inclusive or exclusive.

Singular inclusive forms

Several Polynesian languages, such as Samoan and Tongan, have clusivity with overt dual and plural suffixes in their pronouns. The lack of a suffix indicates the singular. The exclusive form is used in the singular as the normal word for "I", but the inclusive also occurs in the singular. The distinction is one of discourse: the singular inclusive has been described as the "modesty I" in Tongan, often rendered in English as one, while in Samoan its use has been described as indicating emotional involvement on the part of the speaker.

Second-person clusivity

In theory, clusivity of the second person should be a possible distinction, but its existence is controversial. Some notable linguists, such as Bernard Comrie, have attested that the distinction is extant in spoken natural languages, while others, such as John Henderson, maintain that the human brain does not have the capacity to make a clusivity distinction in the second person. Many other linguists take the more neutral position that it could exist but is nonetheless not currently attested.

Clusivity in the second person is conceptually simple but nonetheless if it exists is extremely rare, unlike clusivity in the first. Hypothetical second-person clusivity would be the distinction between "you and you (and you and you ... all present)" and "you and someone else whom I am not addressing currently." These are often referred to in the literature as "2+2" and "2+3", respectively (the numbers referring to second and third person as appropriate). Horst J. Simon provides a deep analysis of second-person clusivity in his 2005 article. He concludes that oft-repeated rumors regarding the existence of second-person clusivity—or indeed, any [+3] pronoun feature beyond simple exclusive we – are ill-founded, and based on erroneous analysis of the data.

Third-person clusivity

Obviative (abbreviated OBV) third person is a grammatical-person marking that distinguishes a non-salient (obviative) third-person referent from a more salient (proximate) third-person referent in a given discourse context. The obviative is sometimes referred to as the "fourth person".

Distribution of the clusivity distinction

The inclusive–exclusive distinction occurs nearly universally among the Austronesian languages and the languages of northern Australia, but rarely in the nearby Papuan languages. (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 several Indo-European languages of India such as Marathi, Rajasthani, Punjabi, Sindhi, and Gujarati (which either borrowed it from Dravidian or was retained as a substratum if Dravidian was displaced), and in the languages of eastern Siberia, such as Tungusic, from which it was borrowed into northern Mandarin Chinese. In indigenous languages of the Americas it is 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 Khoekhoe.

It is, of course, possible in any language to express the idea of clusivity semantically, and many languages provide common forms that clarify the ambiguity of their first person pronoun (English "the rest of us", Italian noialtri). A language with a true clusivity distinction, however, does not provide a first person plural with indefinite clusivity: where the clusivity of the pronoun is ambiguous; rather, the speaker is forced to specify - by choice of pronoun or inflection - whether they are including the addressee or not. This rules out most European languages, for example. Clusivity is nonetheless a very common language feature overall. Some languages with more than one plural number make the clusivity distinction only in, for example, the dual, but not in the greater plural. Others make it in all numbers. In the table below, the plural forms are the ones preferentially listed.

Examples of the clusivity distinction in specific languages

Language	Inclusive form	Exclusive form	Singular related to	Notes	Language family
Ainu	a-/an-	ci-	??		Ainu
Apma	kidi	gema	Neither	Subject prefixes are ta- (incl.) and kaa(ma)- (excl.). Dual forms, derived from the plurals, also exist.	Austronesian
Aymara	jiwasa	naya	Exclusive	The derived form jiwasanaka of the inclusive refers to at least 3 people.	Aymaran
Bislama	yumi	mifala	Both	The inclusive form is derived from the second person pronoun and the first person pronoun. There are also dual and trial forms.	English creole
Cebuano	kita	kami	??	Short forms are ta (incl.) and mi (excl.)	Austronesian
Chechen	vai	txo	Neither		Caucasian
Daur	baa	biede	??		Mongolic
Evenki	mit	bū	??		Tungusic
Fula	en, eɗen	min, miɗen	Exclusive (?)	Examples show short & long form subject pronouns.	Niger-Congo
Guarani	ñande	ore	Neither		Tupi-Guarani
Gujarati	આપણે /aˑpəɳ(eˑ)/	અમે /əmeˑ/	Exclusive		Indo-European
Hadza	onebee	ôbee	Inclusive		Hadza (isolate)
Hawaiian	kāua (dual); kākou (plural)	māua (dual); mākou (plural)			Austronesian
Hiligaynon	kitá	kamí			Austronesian
Ilocano	datayó, sitayó	dakamí, sikamí	??	The dual inclusives datá and sitá are widely used.	Austronesian
Kapampangan	ikatamu	ikami	??	The dual inclusive ikata is widely used.	Austronesian
Australian Kriol	yunmi	melabat	Exclusive	The inclusive form is derived from the second person pronoun and the first person pronoun. The exclusive form is derived from the first person sing. and the third person plural forms. There is significant dialectal and diachronic variation in the exclusive form.	English creole
Lakota	uŋ(k)-	uŋ(k)- ... -pi	Neither	The inclusive form has dual number. By adding the suffix "-pi" it takes the plural number. In the plural form no clusivity distinction is made.	Siouan
Lojban	mi'o	mi'a/mi	Both	There also exists the form ma'a, which means the speaker, listener, and others unspecified. It is of note that the first-person pronoun mi doesn't take number and can refer to any number of individuals in the same group; mi'a and mi'o are usually preferred.	Constructed language
Malagasy	Isika	Izahay	–		Austronesian
Manchu	muse	be	Exclusive		Tungusic
Malay	kita	kami	Neither	The exclusive form is hardly used in informal Indonesian in (and spreading from) Jakarta. Instead, kita is almost always used colloquially to indicate both inclusive and exclusive "we". However, in more formal circumstances (both written and spoken), the distinction is clear and well-practiced. Therefore, kami is absolutely exclusive whereas kita may generally mean both inclusive and exclusive "we" depending on the circumstances. This phenomenon is less frequently encountered in Malaysian.	Austronesian
Malayalam	നമ്മൾ (nammaḷ)	ഞങ്ങൾ (ñaṅṅaḷ)	Exclusive		Dravidian
Mandarin	咱們 / 咱们 (zánmen)	我們 / 我们 (wǒmen)	Exclusive	我们 is used both inclusively and exclusively by most speakers, especially in formal situations. Use of 咱们 is common only in northern dialects, notably Beijing dialect, and may be a Manchu influence.	Sino-Tibetan
Marathi	आपण /aˑpəɳ/	आम्ही /aˑmʱiˑ/	Exclusive		Indo-European
Marwari	/aˑpãˑ/	/mɦẽˑ/	Exclusive		Indo-European
Southern Min	咱 (lán)	阮 (goán/gún)	Exclusive		Sino-Tibetan
Newar language	Jhi: sa:n (झि:सं:)	Jim sa:n (जिम् सं:)		Both are used as possessive pronouns	Sino-Tibetan
Pohnpeian	kitail (plural), kita (dual)	kiht (independent), se (subject)		There is an independent (non-verbal) and subject (verbal) pronoun distinction. The exclusive includes both dual and plural while the independent has a dual/plural distinction	Austronesian
Punjabi	ਆਪਾਂ (apan)	ਅਸੀਂ (asin)			Indo-European
Quechuan languages	ñuqanchik	ñuqayku	Both		Quechuan
Samoan	ʻitatou	ʻimatou	Exclusive	The dual forms are ʻitaʻua (incl.) and ʻimaʻua (excl.)	Austronesian
Shawnee	kiilawe	niilawe	Exclusive	The inclusive form is morphologically derived from the second person pronoun kiila.	Algic
Tagalog	táyo	kamí	Neither		Austronesian
Taiwanese	lán	goán	Exclusive (goá)	The third-person singular i (he/she/it) also pluralizes to in (they/them) via nasalization.	Sinitic > Southern Min
Tausug	kitaniyu	kami	??	The dual inclusive is kita.	Austronesian
Tamil	நாம் (nām)	நாங்கள் (nāṅkaḷ)	Exclusive		Dravidian
Telugu	మనము (manamu)	మేము (memu)	Neither		Dravidian
Tetum	ita	ami	??		Austronesian
Tok Pisin	yumipela	mipela	Exclusive	The inclusive form is derived from the second person pronoun and the first person pronoun. There are also dual and trial forms.	English creole
Tupi	îandé	oré	Inclusive		Tupi-Guarani
Tulu	namma	yenkuḷn			Dravidian
Vietnamese	chúng ta	chúng tôi	Inclusive	The exclusive form is derived from the polite form of I, tôi	Austroasiatic

Further reading

• Jim Chen, First Person Plural (analyzing the significance of inclusive and exclusive we in constitutional interpretation)
• Payne, Thomas E. (1997), Describing morphosyntax: A guide for field linguists, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-58224-5
• Filimonova, Elena (eds). (2005). Clusivity: Typological and case studies of the inclusive-exclusive distinction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. ISBN 90-272-2974-0.