Monday, December 1, 2014

Tatediem: Noun Phrase Orders

The most unmarked order in Tatediem is verb-initial, but rearrangements of the order does occur. Auxiliaries tend to cause the main verb to move beyond the subject, but this is not a hard and fast rule. Not all auxiliaries are (from a morphological point of view) verbs, but even non-verby auxiliaries tend to cause this type of shift.
E.g.
ne-ra-tali Kúmpeni
3SGMASC-3SGFEM-be.uncle Kúmpeni 
Kumpéni is her uncle. 
ya-xème-hépòk ya-kompòké
 NEUT2.PLUR-DUTY-grow NEUT2.PLUR-acre
The acres grow, as is their duty 

Adjectives tend to follow the noun, but discontinuous noun phrases also can occur:
ya-kompòke l-ónta (from uninflected root mónta)
NEUT2.PLUR-acre NEUT2.PLUR-big
big acres, the big acres 
Likewise, numbers and other quantifiers follow their nouns:
ŋwu-tali ŋwu-párt 
nephews  three
 kù-rutkí ku-ppàr
 assistance lots (as seen from the point of view of the provider of the assistance)
 ŋwú-rutkí ŋwu-ppàr
assistance lots (as seen from the point of view of the recipient) 
By moving these to phrase-initial position, with subjects they are either turned into a predicate, and can then also take other verbal markings:
ses-irbum-pàr ses-kàhà
NEUT4-prevalently-lots NEUT4-wheat
There's always lots of wheat 
or emphasized, in which case they cannot take most verbal markings (although ones encoding for evidentiality are permitted):
ses-sèlx ses-magŋú
NEUT4-four NEUT4-carriage
carriages, of which (we have/there are) four 
This particular order is common in accountings of things.

Adjectives and quantifiers that operate as object complements are placed before the object phrase:
verb subject ye-tagé ye-mébdè
verb subject NEUT4-for_sale NEUT4-house
subject verbed the house (into being, or from being, or due to being, or into continuing its being in a state of or similar) for sale. 
Similarly, dividing or merging things or making them shrink or grow may have quantifiers preposed along the same pattern.

Relative subclauses tend to go far to the right in the sentence. They begin with the verb, having the same gender marking as the main noun, and a relative prefix, ku-. Adpositional attributes likewise tend to follow the adjectives and numerals. Owners tend to be extracted from the noun phrase, and exist as a slightly aloof noun phrase with no obvious syntactic connection to the owned phrase. A prefix on the owner agrees in gender with the owned object.

Demonstrative attributes tend to follow directly after the noun, or be displaced to a position close to the predicate.

Phrase order is not set in stone, and discontinuous phrases appear as well, and the restrictions on when they appear is an chapter all to itself.

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