I am considering having some of Rayanese determiners differentiate for animacy, as the 3rd person pronouns already do:
| singular | plural | |
| 3p animate | ko* | jo |
| 3p inanimate | so | ho |
I have already decided to change the 3p animate singular pronoun from lo to ko. I think it would be neat to have these pronouns double as the definite article, hence they would indicate animacy as well as gender, number and case. In general, Rayanese nouns are ‘animate’ if they refer to a sentient being or an animal, or a fantastic/supernatural being.
The current basic list of other determiners are listed below:
| determiner | |
| indefinite article | ziki |
| proximate “this” | co |
| medial “that” | do |
| distal “yon(der)” | duyo |
| “other” | moto |
| partitive article | yo |
I have added a partitive article, yo. Now, how to make these determiners, as well as the relative and interrogative pronouns po and tho reflect animacy? How about a suffix, –ino?
| inanimate | animate | |
| indefinite article | ziki | zikino/kino** |
| definite article*** | so, ho | ko, jo |
| partitive article | yo | yino |
| proximate det. “this” | co | cino |
| medial det. “that” | do | dino |
| distal det. “yon(der)” | duyo | duyino |
| “other” | moto | motino |
| relative pronoun | po | pino |
| interrogative pronoun | tho | thino |
**kino being a short form for zikino.
***For the definite articles, the first article listed is singular, the second is plural. All other forms decline normally for gender, number and case.
A couple of quick examples:
su ashabu– the carku deru – the man
cu ashabu – this carcinu deru – this man