Tatediem morphology: Gender congruence on nouns, adjectives and verbs

1. Gender and Case Marking

Since the gender and case system of Tatediem is inspired by Bantu-style morphologies, it has taken me a lot of effort to break out of the squarely European-style patterns I am used to.



The gender marking on the noun is a prefix. For most genders and cases, this is only present for the definite form. There may be complicated tone sandhi effects caused by the prefix. This morphophonological detail will be dealt with in a later post.

Most prefixes are monosyllabic, along the lines of ku- or sar-. Two are longer, and there are also asyllabic prefixes, t- and l-. The "grammatical" category contains a finite set of rather functional words - conjunctions, a few special adverbs and such. As far as morphosyntax goes, these tend to behave somewhat like nouns, and they also may trigger congruence on verbs and such.

Table of nominal prefixes:
           sing           dual     plural     (mass)
masc    ne-|0         wan-   lan-      (re-)
fem      sar-|0        xan-    lan-      (re-)
neut 1  ku-|0         t-        tsi-       (kku-)
neut 2  ye-            ya-      l-         (l-)
neut 3  gah-         geme-  gge-       (ske-)
neut 4  sse-         setem-  t(t)ew-     (ske-)
gram.  re-            ra-    rax-     re-

(Or n3s: ye-, n1p: l-)

Finally, neuter 1 sometimes uses ye- as a gender marker on indefinite nouns. The partitive is not definite, but sometimes causes gender congruence. The 0-prefix on masculines, feminines and neuter 1s does cause tone sandhi.

Adjectives take a somewhat less detailed set of prefixes:

e- wa- a- de-
ra- ra- la- de-
ke- ke- ke- kku-
ye- l- l- l-
ye- gge- gge- gge-
ye- ye- ye- ye-
ur-   ur-  ur-  ur-

Adjective congruence disregards definiteness and is thus present even in indefinite noun-phrases.

Verbs use the nominal prefixes for subject congruence (and for owner congruence for the owner-subject-... paradigm), and the adjectival prefix series for object congruence (but for subject congruence in the owner-subject-... paradigm). A bunch of reductions and haplology is applied.

Indirect object marking only exists for masculine and feminine, and has its own series:
masc: -ek- -wak- -lak-
fem :-sak- -xak- -lak-
Mass nouns cannot be indirect objects.