A good example of how a syntagmatic approach, looking at a stretch of speech, a whole clause rather than a word in isolation, or a whole text rather than a sentence in isolation, may help to understand both the phonology and the semantics of the pronouns in Hmongic and Tai languages is the White Hmong and Green Mong third person dual pronoun nkawd 'they two'.

When Grima presented his initial findings at a conference at Michigan State University, a student in the audience said, 'I really don't know how you'd formalize this' (Brenda Johns, personal communication). And it shall disclose to you the things to come. However, when that one has come, even the Spirit of the truth, it will lead you into all truth because it shall not speak from itself, but whatever it shall hear, it shall speak. Grima and Strecker (1976) and Grima (1978) show that another pronominal feature of Thai, zero anaphora, is best understood by looking at units larger than a sentence. We are to be guided by holy spirit which Jesus promised would lead us into all the truth. The actual social situations in which a given pair of first and second person pronouns or a given third person pronoun is used differ from speaker to speaker, but the relative degree of politeness and intimacy among the different pronoun pairs and the different third person pronouns is shared by all speakers. Thaum koj hais tias Kuv hlub koj nyob rau lub sij hawm no, nws zoo li hais. Strecker (1980) shows that the large array of first, second, and third person pronouns encoding politeness and intimacy in Thai are defined not in terms of absolute categories such as deferential and familiar but rather relative to each other. Nyob rau hauv lub tswvyim loj ntawm kev sib raug zoo, peb lub hlis yog yoo mov. Koj puas kuv ua koj tus hlub os thov koj tus npaub xov tooj. Thai has social deixis in the third person as well. duabtojsiab nrhiav tus hlub thoob qab ntuj. Paired pronouns in many East and Southeast Asian languages are defined by social deixis in the first person as well as the second person, for example Thai dichán 'I, me', deferential, woman speaking, paired with khun 'you', deferential, common usage (Haas 1964:94, 168). Paired pronouns in European languages are defined by person and number, for example English I and you, first and second person singular, and often by social deixis in the second person, for example French je 'I', first person singular, paired with both tu 'you', familiar second person singular, and vous 'you', polite second person singular. Understanding both the phonology and the semantics of pronouns in the Hmongic and Tai language groups of Southeast Asia includes looking at phrases and clauses as well as at single words, looking at discourse as well as at single sentences, and defining words relative to each other as well as in terms of absolute paradigmatic categories.

Kuv hlub koj meaning