(Osumi, 1995, p. 39)Although the third person pronoun can be used for non-human entities (while the first and second person pronouns generally only refer to humans), speakers tend to use it in its singular form even when there is more than one referent, as seen below (Osumi, 1995, p. 39).

They do not show any distinction for person or number and occur only in their respective forms of hêrrê and va, are unable to appear anywhere other than the subject pronoun position (the first element in the verb phrase), and are never followed by a nominal subject (Osumi, 1995, p. 41).

(Osumi, 1995, p. 43)Subject pronouns may be used in conjunction with the tense-aspect markers ei 'future' and a 'perfect, actual, definite', in which case a number of pronouns may change their phonological form (see the below example, in which the second person singular ke has been combined with a) (Osumi, 1995, p. 170).

Inalienable possession describes an inherent relationship between two referents such as kinship, while alienable possession describes a non-inherent relationship such as temporary ownership or voluntary association (Osumi, 1995, pp. 145).

There are three possessive prepositional markers in Tiri: nrâ, rre/rrê, and ò and they occur between two nominals in the following structure.

Temporary ownership or voluntary relationship Express personal possession The use of fire for warming or cooking purposes nrâ functions as both a subject and possessive marker when it precedes a noun phrase.

mwâHutrrêPOSSkevi1PL.EXmwâ rrê keviHut POSS 1PL.EX‘our (not including you) hut’ (Osumi, 1995, p. 146)The possessed noun phrases that can occur with prepositions ò are limited to nre ‘fire, firewood’ or compounds with nre: mee-nre ‘habitation’, pwò-nre ‘touch’, and mwârrâ-nre ‘fire flame’ (Osumi, 1995, p. 147).

The possessive relationship expressed by ò is related to fire, with the purpose of warming oneself or cooking something.

They consist of the following: e-, ere-, hwee-, odho-, hwiie-, êê- and hêê- (Osumi, 1995, p. 49).

This class is inalienable as that the referents of the nouns are possessed in some inextricable way, for example, kinship and body parts.

They include nouns referring to kinship, body or plants or other inanimate parts, secretions or of the body or plant, personal attributes or properties and the effects or origins of human affairs (Osumi, 1995, p. 153).

For example of afiraa 'wife', where it is bound to the third person singular possessive nrî: toniTonynrâ3SGsùveharruloveafiraa-nrîwife-3SGtoni nrâ sùveharru afiraa-nrîTony 3SG love wife-3SG‘Tony loves his wife’ (Osumi, 1995, p. 59)An example of the body part mouth with the first person singular rò: nrîfò-ròMouth-1SGnrîfò-ròMouth-1SGmy mouth’ (Osumi, 1995, p. 59)Link nouns referents belong to similar categories of bound nouns such as kinship and body or plants or other inanimate parts.

Both constructions are difficult to differentiate, the link nouns depict inalienable possession and cannot be separated from their possessor by an element (Osumi, 1995, p. 154).

Although the examples represented are not comprehensive for both bound and link nouns, they show that there is no structural distinction between the two subclasses.

This shows that all external human body parts are bound nouns, except for ao- in Tîrî (Osumi, 1995, p. 65).