The U and WEI pronouns in Arusian
U and WEI are “special” pronouns in Arusian, because they don’t behave like other words and personal pronouns. In this article, we will explain their functions and why they can be considered resumptive pronouns.
Resumptive pronouns are a category of pronouns that simply refer back to an element already mentioned before. They are quite common in languages like Arabic, Hebrew, and Brazilian Portuguese. Although in Portuguese they are mostly optional, albeit common in speech, in Arabic and Hebrew they are mandatory in certain syntactic structures. In Arusian, the pronouns u and wei are also mandatory, as their omission can lead to ambiguity. Resumptive pronouns in Arusian allows you to make longer and more complex sentences.
The U Pronoun
In Arusian, when another noun or adjectival element modifies a noun, it cannot be linked directly to other elements of the sentence. Because of that, Arusian has to employ a resumptive pronoun, like u, to continue the flow of the sentence. For example: vek umus u sa lu ouwr ‘I want a big car’ .
vek umus u sa lu ouwr
car big-LINK it LINK I want
The pronoun u here refers back to the constituent vek umus, which can also be a sentence on its own, meaning ‘the car is big’. This clause works as the topic of the sentence. An interesting thing that can be noted is that when we separate those two sentences with a period, they both become two stand-alone sentences.
Vek umus. Su sa lu ouwr.
‘The car is big. It, I want’
It seems that u might be semantically the same as su (a third-person pronoun), but u is only used as a resumptive pronoun, whereas su has almost no restriction in terms of where in the clause it can appear (except for the contexts where so will be required and this will be mentioned later). Thus, this is the table for third-person pronouns:
| Stand-alone | Modifier | Resumptive |
|---|---|---|
| su | sus | u |
| su-pei | sa su-pei |
The WEI Pronoun
Similar to the u, wei is also a resumptive pronoun. However, instead of referring to topicalized clauses, wei refers to non-focus or predicate clauses. For example: Vek sa vel auwayeis wei ouwr ‘The pretty woman wants a car’
vek sa vel auwayeis wei ouwr
car LINK female beautiful-LINK it.PRED want
The pronoun wei refers back to the constituent vel auwayeis, which can stand on its own as a complete sentence, meaning ‘the woman/girl is beautiful’. The resumptive pronoun wei is used to continue the flow of the sentence. Sentences with wei can also be expressed, alternatively, as two separate sentences.
Vek sa vel ouwr. Vel auwayeis.
‘The woman wants a car. The woman is beautiful.’
With that in mind, it is possible to conclude that wei is semantically similar to so, as u is similar to su, as both pronouns refer to constituents in the predicate. However, wei is only a resumptive pronoun and so is its stand-alone form.
| Stand-alone | Modifier | Resumptive |
|---|---|---|
| so | sos | wei |
| so-pei | sa so-pei |
Bibliography
Wikipedia. "Resumptive Pronoun." Last modified August 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resumptive_pronoun.