Detail #376 Revisited: Quirky Adjectives

 In quirky adjectives I considered some quirky things adjectives can cause. Some new ideas that have occurred to me are:

• Offset gender, number or definiteness marking on the noun
• Specific adjectives that force plural marking on collective singular nouns
• Adjectives that cause nouns to have special case marking in comparisons
• Adjectives that force explicit plural marking (or explicit singular marking) on numerals.
• In a language where numerals are followed by singulars, consider 'the_pl honorable_pl five_pl members of this committee', and for a language where they're normally followed by singulars, 'the_sg honorable_sg five_sg member of this committee'. For the case with forced plural marking, consider the case 'the_pl honorable_pl one_pl member_pl of this committee'.
• Adjectives that change the scope of negation and quantifiers around them, while also having actual adjectival semantics. E.g. 'no student solved every ADJ task' - imagine the adjective here is something like 'damned', but also pulls along a change in scope such that it now means 'no student solved any task'.
• Words that syntactically are adjectives, but semantically are voice operators, so that e.g. a certain adjective specifies that the noun in fact is the marker makes both marks 'this clause is passive' and the agent of the clause by its mere presence. This could also perhaps work with e.g. tense as adjectives instead, such that e.g. multiple contrasting subjects of different tense (or even objects) could coexist. This isn't tense of NPs, this is tense of VPs marked as an adjectival marker inside the NP.
  

A Cwarmin-Ŋʒädär family universal

In Ćwarmin and Ŋʒädär and related languages, the fingers of the left and right hand are differentiated grammatically.

Those of the right hand are mandatorily possessed. Those of the left hand are, if applicable, mandatorily of the same degree of definiteness as the person to which they belong.

In certain eastern Bryatesle dialects, the same setup has emerged out of Bryatesle influence.

Dairwueh and Bryatesle: Subjects with adpositions and nominative postpositions

There are constructions in Dairwueh and Bryatesle where adpositions mark subjects. This is especially common in subordinate clauses, but not entirely unusual in main clauses either. Let us start out with the ones that work in both sub- and main clauses.

This essay has probably sat in the drafts folder for eight years by now so I figure it's time to publish it even though it's a bit rough.

1. The Dairwueh preposition 'teu'.

'Teu' has several uses, but the meanings nearly all derive from 'kind of'. A kind of, the kind of, some kind of, this kind of. It is very common when making categorical statements: teu darat tsem [...]

Its nature as a preposition is clear from the following facts: 

• its complement is in the locative-instrumental
• it can be coordinated with certain other prepositions
• it can take a preprepositional.
  
• The preprepositional argument marks the use for which the kind(s) are meant - e.g. kaubeng teu dorule = health kind-of food ~ types of food intended for  health
• It also marks a supercategory of which the thing is in a category "salar teu balin" - animal kind-of horse 'an animal, specifically a kind of horse'

2. Dairwueh burn and melt/dissolve

Not even in modern times does Dairwueh normally distinguish 'dissolve' from 'melt'. However, in chemistry and other contexts where the difference has some significance, the subject of 'dissolve' is often marked by the preposition yil (sometimes lo or əre), whereas melt tends to be reflexive. Similarly,  chemists tend to distinguish two types of burning by marking the subject with a preposition.

A fire with visible flames has a normal subject, chemical corrosion uses yil or lo.

 3. Bryatesle 'few'/'little'

In Bryatesle, 'few' operates syntactically as a postposition.  It normally takes the accusative case, with the ablative used when expressing the sense of 'too few'. They are also found in coordinations with the following postpositions or in similar positions

• with, without (as in 'in association with')
  
• full of
• instrumental adpositions

It cannot stand as the subject of a transitive verb, but can be the subject of an antipassive construction.

4. The Bryatesle 'associative preposition'

Although Bryatesle primarily has postpositions, the grammaticalization path that lead to the associative preposition caused it to end up on the other side. The associative preposition simply is a marker of metonymy. Not necessarily mandatory whenever metonymy is involved, but quite often used for that purpose.

5. Sometimes in comparisons

In both Bryatesle and Dairwueh, it happens that both the comparanda are marked by the comparative marker.

6. Presence of vocatives

The presence of a vocative in a clause can cause the subject to be marked by adpositions in both Bryatesle; primarily the postposition '(+abl) gyner'.

7. In some subordinated coordinated structures where subjecthood is unclear

8. Resumptive pronouns

Resumptive pronouns in relative subclauses almost always have the postposition 'gyner' in Bryatesle.

9. In subclauses specifying the place or time of something.

10. The Dairwueh preposition 'ne'.

This preposition can be used with subjects and objects, but has several functions, and is not triggered by things "outside of" the NP, unlike the previous examples.

 

So, in what way are these subjects and not adverbs that just are topicalized?

The main reason would be their syntactical effects. I will list the very subject-like ones first:

• Permit reflexive reference
• Cannot be coordinated with adverbs
• Can be coordinated over gaps with subjects
• Have subject-like scope
• Undergo raising like subjects do
  

However,  things that may look non-subject like include

• They block congruence on verbs
• The presence of an adpositional subject requires an adposition also in the complement of the copula in Bryatesle
• The preposition blocks the use of genitive for definite subjects in Dairwueh, and the neuter-ergative is blocked in Bryatesle.
•  Explicitly transitive verb forms are nearly never permitted
• The Bryatesle 'few', for instance, requires a detransitivized verb whenever the English corresponding sentence would have 'a few ...' be the subject of a transitive verb.

Tense in Sargaĺk

Sargaĺk's tense system (ignoring the topic of aspect) has a few complications:

Different basic underlying systems for different verbs
Some verbs in Sargaĺk have a past-present-future system going, e.g. 'to be', 'to go', 'to snow', 'to prepare for a fishing excursion', 'to remember', 'to remain', 'to vow'. Some verbs have a past vs. non-past system, and some have a non-future vs. future system. Further, some verbs have hodiernal and even hesternal forms.

The poverty of marking
If we count all forms distinguished or permitted by at least one verb, we reach about a dozen tenses:

hodiernal non-past, hodiernal past, hodiernal future, hodiernal non-future, hodiernal present, hodiernal future, hesternal, regular future, far future, regular past, far past, present, wide present

Despite this, there are only these morphemes in use:

-mab-:

future  or non-past, when reduplicated it can indicate hodiernal or crastinal future, depending on the verb.

-nek'-

past or non-future, when reduplicated it can indicate hodiernal or hesternal past, depending on the verb.

The hodiernal non-past or non-future is often unmarked with a tense marker, but this does differ with some verbs. 

A few verbs do not form the basic tenses by suffixes, but by stem suppletion, e.g.

non-past sab, past kasa: raise, heighten, lift
non-past rorn, past jita: sleep
future: ingar, non-future nasan, grow, turn, (become)
future: p'ulk, non-past: uluŋ, cease, give up, give in,

These verbs distinguish the greatest number of tenses: both stems can combine with both the future/non-past and with the past/non-future marker. The resulting samnek'- signifies hodiernal past, whereas kasnek' signifies a hesternal past, kasmab signifies a hodiernal fuure, samab signifies a crastinal future. Reduplication leads to far past or future tenses.

Aspect

Aspect has certain dedicated markers; however, derivative morphology sometimes interacts with aspect markers - either by making them superfluous, or by causing other particular markers to be used. Aspect is somewhat lexical.

Comparative Linguistics
In Dairwueh, '-mab' has a cognate in 'maptə', soon (perfective), and 'maviŋa' tomorrow. 'Mab' thus clearly relates to future spans of time in Dairwueh.

-nek' has several cognates in both Dairwueh and Bryatesle - ynykt is yesterday evening in Bryatesle, usually in the ablative definite ynykənt, 'a duration during last evening)'. There's also an adverb 'any(k)tmin', which signifies at some indeterminate time during the last few days. In Dairwueh, you get ənken 'yesterday', as well as -ənk suffixed to numbers signifying 'days ago', and the adverb nəkne, 'a while ago'. For both languages, there's thus evidence indicating that -nek relates quite clearly to a time during the previous day.

Detail #442: An Obvious Split Alignment

Consider a system whereby any VP with exclusively third person arguments form your average nominative-accusative (or even erg-abs or whatever) structure. However, whenever a first or second person is involved, the system is inverse instead. Thus, the inverse and the direct markers also are, in some sense, a person marker: they signal the presence of at least a first- or second-person participant in the VP.

However, let's imagine further that even the presence of an indirect object in the first or second person triggers this. Let's, however, still have the inverse alignment be the only role-assigning marker even in that case.

Bryatesle: Personal Pronouns

The personal pronouns of Bryatesle form the following table:

Singular
	nom	acc	dat	abl
1st	nëm	(n)a	(n)ek	(n)ïty
2nd	tvem	tëku	tërsi	tërty
3rd masc	en	menak	mersi	merty
3rd fem	emi	enyk	enir	enam
3rd neut	es	es	syn	sity
plural
1st	vli	vilku	versi	versi
2nd	xnivim	xnu (xinku)	xnërsi (xersi)	xnërsi
3rd	tivi	teku	tevsi	tevsi

Historically, tevsi has been tërsi - thus coinciding with the 2nd person singular dative, but these have since dissimilated. The dissimilation in part pushed along the conflation in central dialects between masculine, feminine and neuter plurals, as 'tevsi' previously was the neuter form. 

This change has been spreading from the central dialects over the recent century, and has not hit all regions yet. In far western dialects, tërsi remains as the 3rd person plural dative form, but tërty has spread to be 2nd person singular dative as well. Most educated writers - even those who speak dialects that conflate them - distinguish them in writing. As for the gender distinction in the plural third person pronouns, it remains in northern and western dialects, but has been lost in the east, south and central areas. These forms vary strongly.

Pronouns also have secondary case markers, but these exist as phonologically independent words, albeit with very restrictive syntactic distribution. Definite forms exist as well, and the interpretation of these are not necessarily entirely transparent.

In 

Usage

Third person reference resolution

 

Over the span of modern colloquial Bryatesle, reference resolution differs regiolectally and chronolectally. Capital region Bryatesle from middle-modern to late-modern roughly follows these  principles: any contextually prominent singular noun phrase of the correct gender or number is a candidate for reference. The more recent, the more likely to be the correct referent, except that the previous clause has its own ranking system: there, subjects outrank other potential referents, and clause-initial non-subjects are second in rank. A definite noun raises the likelihood that a pronoun will be parsed as referring to it. Demonstratives do not have this effect - instead, demonstrative pronouns are likely to be used to refer to nouns which have been expressed with demonstrative determiners.

A significant amount of lexical information may affect interpretation of reference - e.g verbs that are associated with animal subjects (e.g. at. garʋer / tel. gerʋar - roar, at. tepʋer / tel. tapar, 'to gallop', at. nʋusir / tel. nʋesar 'to sniff' (of dogs)), will generally be interpreted to refer to a suitable candidate animal even if other pronoun parsing rules would prefer a different referent.

Third person pronouns cannot refer to a noun that is introduced in the same clause, in such a case the noun must instead be referred to by a demonstrative. The Vartaky school of philosophy's writing rules demands a curve be drawn in writing to connect such references in text for clarity, other varieties have gone in for pretty wordy disambiguating parentheticals. The Capital court language demands the use of a compound consisting of the demonstrative and a regular third person pronoun for such reference in writing, although it is usually only the demonstrative that is read out.

The plural is more complicated: the third person plural may even refer to multiple, separate noun phrases of singular or plural or mixed numbers that need not even be in syntactically similar positions or even in the same clause. However, in legal and philosophical texts, wherever it is unclear which nouns are referred to, they are often presented between two copies of the pronoun, all in the same case, e.g.

teku, parde-le dynke, teku.

them, poor(sg)-and rich(sg), them

 

There are certain indicators of higher likelihood of mixed-positional reference: verbs that indicate social interaction, competition, comparison, attempts at contrasting, communicating relations, either with the antecedent or with the pronoun, may indicate that the reference is to multiple antecedents - unless a plural antecedent that clearly fits the bill could be found. Nouns that denote persons or things that belong to some kind of culturally important set - the family, the village, the crew, the functionaries of certain events, are likely to be interpreted as being referred to by one pronoun.

As for the plural pronoun, the use of a definite marker after the pronoun tends to indicate as 'narrow' a possible interpretation of the reference: noun-phrases that at the very least were coordinated, preferably maybe even just one noun phrase.

Pro-drop permits for even stricter reference resolution in the plural: if no pronoun is used, a verb with plural subject must have as the referent a single plural NP (or coordinated noun phrases), preferrably if possible in the previous clause, or a recent plural subject of some verb. Third person singular pro-drop reference is similarly restricted, but does naturally not resolve the 'multiple simultaneous references' issue

 

Second and First Person Number

The number of the second person pronouns may not exactly respond to the number of the addressee or speaker, and may also deviate from the number marked on the verb. The verbal number always correlates to the 'actual' number in these cases. The most common situations where such divergence is marked are these:

• A person seen as a representative of a group.
  
• One person in a group is seen as of primary social importance even outside that group. Thus, e.g. a king and his entourage can be spoken of in the singular.
• In reported speech, plural is often preferred over singular for subjects.

First number can also deviate from the number of the referred people:

• One person having particular ownership of the action. This only really can be 'transparent' with subjects, and so isn't really a thing with objects. With non-subjects, this deviation arguably does not exist.

Bryatesle: Traces of the Vanished Copula

Although Bryatesle's copula is mostly absent, having been replaced by other intransitive verbs that take complements, it has left some traces in rather specific syntactical contexts. Meanwhile, several dialectal copulas exist, with rather stunningly different origins. This essay covers a fair share of copula-adjacent shenanigans.

The proto-Bryatesle-Dairwueh copula

In an early stage of proto-BD, one can posit that the copula had the following forms:

sg pl

1 ji(tju)n jitjam

2 ji(tju)r jihine (jitjune also for pl)

3.I jider jides (jitju also attested for both singular and plural)

3.II ji(tju)m ji(t)ver

3.fem jiden / jiden (or jitjen)

The copula did not have a perfective/imperfective distinction, but did have a past tense form, and an exceptional feminine form:

 sg pl

1 tin tim

2 tir tine

3.I ta tas

3.II tem (t)ver 

3.fem tiden

The feminine form seems mainly to have been used as a third person feminine marker, but sometimes, it has been used in other persons as well.

A different non-verbal copula was used for punctual past, viz. invariable "kund", a word whose cognate "gan" serves as a contrastive conjunction ('but') in Dairwueh, and the cognate "kul" serves as an abessive marker in tarist.

2. Retentions of the copula forms

In comparisons

In comparisons, the standard of the comparison often is followed by a simplified copula. The person marking has been reduced to jir (sg) vs. jes (pl). This still follows the number of the standard of comparison, regardless of the case it is in.

Resumptive functions

The third person forms are sometimes used as resumptive subject pronouns in subclauses.

Some subclauses

These forms can all book-end (i.e. introduce or end) certain types of subclauses, e.g. relative subclauses, that-clauses (complements of 'say' and such, especially when the speech is not a direct quote).

Some adverbs

Some adverbs have -(j)im- or -ta- as a derivative affix. Examples:

jimuake 'it is enough'

jivruake 'they are enough'

jimarta 'fortunately'

jindegug 'already' (sometimes ingidug)

jimkanu, jinkanu 'still' 

takyrs 'certainly' ('was yes')

Strong affirmation

The third person forms sg jider, pl jides (f jiden) are often used as a positive enforcing verb, coordinated with the main verb. However, the feminine form is restricted to formal speech and a few dialects, being replaced by the masculine in most dialects and registers.

Negating existence or presence

The negative particle, when negating existence or presence of a subject or object, can take a prefix jim-/jid-.

Presence or location

Some locative expressions take these as suffixes to denote being at a location. This can be used to closer tie a locative to the subject, in case the relation between location, subject and other argument is unclear. So, e.g. 'kauda' means 'at home', but 'jirkauda'(sg)/'jinkauda'(pl) specifically means '(the subject is) at the subject's home'. As opposed to 'we visited him at home'. If the subject is first person, you sometimes get 'jinkauda', and this is also a common answer as to the question where someone was, if they were at home.

Verb suffixes

Some verbs clearly derive from the copula affixing onto a stem. This can be found at both edges of the stem:

kerjider - has a certain duration

 jidranu - persists, endures

Such verbs often have slightly irregular inflection.

Copula-like words

These are the copulas or copula-like words we find traces of, each having at some time, in some dialect or in some cognate language taken on a copula-like function:

• sikn > siku, an essive postposition, from an adjective meaning 'similar', even previously from a word meaning 'face' (sargalk cognate: šek'an > ch'ešn, 'chin', Dairwueh cognates sinzet - 'facial expression', but also sinze - 'in front of'); in Tarist, the cognate (sik(n)) is the stem for the copula. The 'heyday' of this copula from a Bryatesle vantage point was proto-Bryatotarist. Western Tarist uses it both as a copula and an essive marker.
  
• kund, a contrastive conjunction (like English but), which eventually came to be an emphatic copula in some southern dialects. The cognate gən in Dairwueh signifies 'and then', in Tarist, kund signifies 'without'. In northwestern Bryatesle, kund is sometimes used as a past tense copula, and was more widely used as such in early Bryatesle.
  
• yan, (P-BD zgam) an originally essive preposition. By Proto-Bryatesle, this had mainly become an affirmative particle, but also a resumptive ~pronoun. The cognate in Dairwueh, zam, expresses 'emphatic self' as well as exclusive specification, and is also the origin of the -ŋa-series of passive present markers. In some insular dialects, this is still used before nominal complements of any verb that is used as a copula. In older texts, and southeastern dialects, this sometimes is used as a standalone present tense copula.
  
• The "continuous value copula" of proto-Bryatesle-Dairwueh:
  ıtıwn | ıtırw | ıtıw
  ıtıkw | ıtıwv | ıtıwvə
  which however early on lost its first and second person forms for a uniform ıtıu > jıtju, from which new forms emerged (the present tense table given above). In Dairwueh, the cognate hidze is used for expressing quantities and durations, and in the causative is the stem for the verb 'to count'. The Tarist cognate itsju expresses 'exceed' in comparisons. No known Sargalk cognate.
  
• The Proto-Bryatesle-Dairwueh binary state copula,
  k'ıx | kı'rp | k'ıxw
  k'ıko | k'ıwo | k'ıwə
  which similarly lost all forms but kıxw > kıvu by Proto-Bryatesle.
  In Sargalk, a cognate tš'i- is used both for polar questions and emphatic confirmation. In Bryatesle, it has come to stand in either-or-questions kıvu A kıvu B?
  
• The existential particle nıd, whose Tarist cognate nidi- signifies "be alive". In Sargalk, the adverb nurne, signifying 'even now, still, continuing' might originate with the same stem, as might the verb nuvu- 'to remain, to be alive, (to wait)'. Dairwueh nirzes - nourishment, and neze - 'for the duration of' might also be cognate. This particle also is part of several Bryatesle nouns and verbs, such as nidmar - nourishment, nidtul - to survive, nidnyr - birth. Beyond its role as an (emphatic) existential particle in Bryatesle, in some southern dialects it can be used as a locative copula. At the border towards Tarist, its use as a general copula is attested.
  
• The demonstrative ~verb 'siš' ('is this one, this one is, here is ..., ... is here') - the dairwueh cognate 'hise' is a reference disambiguator: when a pronoun refers to a following noun, the following noun usually has 'hise' introducing the NP.
  
• A fairly formal synonym for 'become' seems to be derived from 'was not, is' - datajir (no was is)