Clusivity

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. Clusitivity is not a feature of the English language or any other European languages (unless Caucasian languages are to be counted).'1' tap chest + twist (pl)'1' tap each side of chest (pl) 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. Clusitivity is not a feature of the English language or any other European languages (unless Caucasian languages are to be counted). 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.