A short summary of Tatədiem
Tatədiem is an agglutinating language with some fusionality. Its noun system distinguishes three numbers - singular, dual, plural, as well as mass nouns. The singular and plural forms distinguish, further, definite and indefinite forms, whereas the dual is only used with definite forms. Mass nouns do not distinguish definiteness.
Further, definiteness and number fuse with case as well, combining with ergative, absolutive, *instrumental, partitive, dative (only definite), and locative. Mass nouns and indefinite plurals merge ergative, absolutive and partitive, indefinite singulars merge absolutive and ergative, as well as partitive and locative.
Certain female names are morphologically dual and so are some place names. Almost all of these have some syncretism with the singular, and the occasional one with the plural.
The nouns have a bantu-style gender system, but with the gender markers more restricted in when and where they appear. Basically,
As for the verb, it can show gender agreement with the subject, the object, and the indirect object. Certain auxiliary verbs can show agreement with some other things, such as instruments, locations and recipients. Certain aspects and voices are marked by simply adding an auxiliary with some congruence in place, and leaving the regular verb with canonical marking.
This system may sound a bit redundant and rich, but I intend to break it sufficiently that an interesting system will be obtained.
Further, definiteness and number fuse with case as well, combining with ergative, absolutive, *instrumental, partitive, dative (only definite), and locative. Mass nouns and indefinite plurals merge ergative, absolutive and partitive, indefinite singulars merge absolutive and ergative, as well as partitive and locative.
Certain female names are morphologically dual and so are some place names. Almost all of these have some syncretism with the singular, and the occasional one with the plural.
The nouns have a bantu-style gender system, but with the gender markers more restricted in when and where they appear. Basically,
- an indefinite noun does not have gender markers
- adjectives with a definite noun have gender-number congruence, and as complements they also take the partitive case.
As for the verb, it can show gender agreement with the subject, the object, and the indirect object. Certain auxiliary verbs can show agreement with some other things, such as instruments, locations and recipients. Certain aspects and voices are marked by simply adding an auxiliary with some congruence in place, and leaving the regular verb with canonical marking.
This system may sound a bit redundant and rich, but I intend to break it sufficiently that an interesting system will be obtained.
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