Wednesday, August 17, 2016

A Sargaĺk Discourse Particle Suffix

In Sargaĺk there is a discourse suffix that goes on the focus of an utterance, whenever the statement also is in agreement with a previous speakers utterance. 

The morpheme -sal thus marks any explicit agreement:

It is, however, bimorphemic. In the negative, the final -l is dropped, giving -sa. The -l, taking the form -(ə)l is suffixed to the negation particle. Some dubitive particles (astap, 'is that so?', igar, 'apparently (dubitive)', zoba '(denial of allegation by other part') can also take -(ə)l although sometimes the focused noun takes the full -sal instead. Some dialects of Bryatesle retain traces of a secondary case that might be related: -s as a marker on personal pronouns and demonstratives in focus positions.

A similar distribution can be found for the word 'dəg' in Ćwarmin. It, however, is reduplicated after the negation particle (and not at all attracted by dubitive particles). It goes before postpositions, but after the head of an NP.

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