A few Terms of Time in Ćwarmin, Ŋʒädär and cognate languages

This is a bit preliminary.

Ćwarmin and Rasm^jin^j have borrowed the system of times of day, as well as higher-order calendarical structures from Bryatesle, whereas Ətimin and Astami conserve the Ćwarmin-Ŋʒädär system intact. However, the lexemes in Ćwarmin and Rasm^jin^j are often cognate to those of the other Ćwarminoid languages, and have simply been repurposed to Bryatesle cultural standards.

Historical Background
The Ćwarmin-Ŋʒädär ur-tribes divided the day into a system somewhat familiar to us: morning, day, evening and night. The 'cycle' is considered to begin at sunrise. Every ĆŊD language has cognates to at least some of these terms. The divisions correspond to watches in camps (which, however, normally overlap.)

Subdivisions of the day
An important pair of adverbs that have surviving cognates in every branch, and also 'functional' equivalents in many languages that lack cognates, are

*birn
*voru

which signify 'in the previous quarter of the day' or 'in the next quarter of the day'. The proto-language formed words meaning "a day and a quarter from now" or "three quarters of a day from now" by reduplicating these. Sound-changes have hit these particular words in some special ways - sometimes, the morphemes have been treated as separate words until at some point in each language's history, they've become full-fledged single morpheme words.

Cw: birmir, uarjur ( b > v / r_V or #_u,  v > j /r_V,  > u #_V)
Ast: birbir, uoruor (v > u /_o and also v > u /r_)
Rs: birnə, vorbʊ (v > b /_uC, _oC, _ʊC)
Ŋʒ: vırmız, varoz ( b > v /#_V, -z is a suffix)
Dg: (m)ʊmber, (m)ʊrbel (#b > #m, randomly. rv > rb, murber > murbel due to dissimilation)

In the Ćwarmin branch, a similar time yesterday can be specified by suffixing *-zi or *-zu. This -zi suffix is probably cognate to Ŋʒ -z. in Ćwarmin and Rasm^jin^j these terms exist, but now refer to the next span of Bryatesle day subdivisions.

In proto-Ćwarmin, a verb 'birdən' signifying 'to wait for one's turn, to be preparing for a task, to expect, to soon be busy' derives from *birn, whereas *vordan, deriving from *voru signifies participating in post-activities: tidying up, washing, etc.

In Ćwarmin and Rasm^jin^j these words rather signify the next/previous Bryatesle hour-like unit of time, of which there are sixteen per nychtemeron.
 

Morning, Day, Evening, Night

Ćw Ast Rs Ŋʒ Dg

arad arro arot äzä adʒı

jit int injtjin uk'u imii ımı/(f)ındı-)

The proto-ĆŊD word for morning was *azda, potentially either cognate to *asu (to wake up) or *anzor (sunrise), probably related through some earlier word, maybe pre-proto-CND *egnso- 'rise up, raise, open (of eyes, bottles, jars or cutting open something), burst'

Ćw:  arad (azda > azad, z > r /V_V)
Ast: orro (azda > aza > a'ra > awr:a)
Rs: arot (azad > azod > azot > arot)
Ŋʒ: äzä (azda > aza > random vowel harmony realigment)
Dg: adʒ(ı) (azda > adza,  a > ı / _#, dz > dʒ / _ı, _i) (change in meaning: 'early')

Proto-ĆŊD for 'day' was '*gnumn', giving

Ćw: now (um > om, m > w /V_n#, where V = back vowel)
Ast: navvol
Rs: naon
Ŋʒ: ŋumor ('tomorrow')
Dg: ŋö(-n-)

*gnumn may be cognate to pre-proto-CND *gunu- sky and thus be related to Dg ŋost ('cloud'), Ŋʒ ŋuzro ('arctic lights'), Ast narrob ('rain'), Cwarmin owno (sky), Ast owno

Some derived terms:

Astimin and Rasjminj also derive recent words for the sun from this:

ast: navvark, rs: naoroh

A similar word can be found in some poetic Ćwarmin: noworak

Proto-ĆŊD for evening was *tyrs, giving

Ćw: tic (y > i / _r, rs > c /_#, )Ast: ter (i > e /#(C)_r#)
Rs: tils (rs > ls, random, y > i, random (~0.3 prob) in monosyllables)
Ŋʒ: tydźy   (rs > rź, rź > dź, -y is a nominalizing suffix)
Dg: jyrem (t > j / #_Vr, V = front rounded vowel, probs by proxy of t_j_w > d_j_w > d_j > dʒ, -em = time affix)

The proto-ĆŊD word for night was *imid. In parts of the Ŋʒädär branch this has been replaced by reflexes of *uk'ot, 'dark'. Thus, cognates often mean 'night', but in some descendant languages 'this (incoming) night' or 'last night':

Ćw: jit (but jint- before suffixes that begin with vowels)
Ast: int ('inni' for 'this (incoming night', 'inits' for 'last night')
Rs: in^jt^jen
Ŋʒ: uk'u (no ending in absolutive, -s-/-t- in other cases).
"imi-" now signifies sunset instead.

Süw: imii
Dg: ımə, dat. fındın or ındın. (The case prefix has acquired some meaning differentiation in expressions of time and been generalized to all cases except the absolutive, and distinguishes "night (in general)" from any particular night.

Today, Yesterday, Tomorrow and Beyond
In all branches there are languages that preserve cognates of a variety of old words.

day before yesterday: *qaluwuna
yesterday: *qalur
today: *mest
tomorrow: *tetri
day after tomorrow: *tetrijinä

Astami: N/A, kalu-nu, mih-ni, ćeič-ni, ćeiči-ni
Dagurib: qaluwɞ, qal, mesit, tetir, tetirjin
Ŋʒädär: qoruŋa, qolur, mär* (mäsä*- for inflected forms), täryr, (täty- for inflicted forms) tärynjä
Süw: quurqur (renewed reduplication frrom qur), quur, met, teir, tädeir (through intermediate forms *terteer > *terdeer > *terdeir)

*mär, mäsä have been lost in modern Ŋʒädär, being replaced with ŋumrum, from ŋumor (to-day). Almost all speakers tend to dissimilate either the last -m to n, giving ŋumrun, or m to b, giving ŋubrum or even ŋ to g, giving gumrum. This serves to distinguish "to (a/the) day (indefinite)" from "today" - "to a day" being regularly formed and "today" having those sound changes. Which form serves which function varies strongly in dialects.

However, in early Ŋʒädär, *mär, mäsä still were present. Tärynjä no longer is specifically the day after tomorrow, but any day in the near future (including, possibly, tomorrow).

Süw's tädeir likewise does not signify 'the day after tomorrow', but is an adjective signifying 'the next [timespan]'.
 

 In Ćwarmin, 'today' is formed form the demonstrative arna- in the general ablative: arnaraś. Sometimes this is hit by some kind of dissimilation-transposition and comes out as aranaś, anaraś or even arnaś but there's also attestations of both araraś and ananaś. A period of a few days including today can be arnuroś / arunoś. Oftentimes, this signifies 'this week' (by Bryatesle standards of week). In Bryatesle-influenced areas, you also often get olbaraś (from olba, "that") for 'yesterday'. This is somewhat odd, though, as it can also signify 'that day' or even 'that time', and so is a bit sensitive to context.

Despite being marked for case, aranaś and arunoś have partially been reinterpreted as nominatives, and can take further case suffixes.

'In a few days' in Ćwarmin is generally formed by cularaś (sg) or culuroś (pl), depending on whether the thing that happens is expected to last at most a day, or longer. Similar constructions exist in the other Ćwarminoid languages.

Ŋʒädär: Indefinite Address

Indefinite address in Ŋʒädär differs from that of English significantly. Indefinite address does reuse parts of the indefinite pronoun system for some constructions - but only because the dedicated indefinite second person address pronouns lack certain case forms.

1. Indefinite 2nd person

Besides the usual second person pronoun vär, Ŋʒädär has a rather special second person indefinite pronoun, 'jusa(n)' (absolutive), 'jusam' (dative). It has a rather simplified case morphology, but has a specialized morphological system. It seems fairly clear it originates with the imperative "jus", listen up.

1.1 Use

The pronoun is used when addressing (at least) one individual out of a group, such that the speaker is not aware of the identity, but is able to deduce the existence of, or at the very least suspects the existence of, a person that fulfills some given criteria. In writings, it an also address any reader that has some quality, or any reader in general. With the spread of literacy, it has especially taken to being the term of address employed when instructing any reader to do something - in letters to a specific reader, the second person is used instead.

1.2 Morphology 

The pronoun only distinguishes two cases, the absolutive and the dative. Other cases are conflated either with the second person pronoun vär, or some  indefinite pronoun (depending on context, style, time, personal preference of the speaker, etc).

However, jusa(n) has some special morphology, with some amount of syncretism in the system. It is similar to the indefinite pronouns lisar and nusar, with the exception that lisar and nusar have a full case system (with some syncretism).

	adnominal	adattributal	adclausal
absolutive	jusar, lisar	jusada, lisada	sajusan, salisan
dative	jusam, lisam	jusada, lisada	jusam, lisam

Forms such as jusaŋa, jusus, jusuk, jusluno etc do appear in speech, but rather infrequently. They do seem to elicit a certain sense of "wrongness" whenever used, both in most hearers and speakers. 

The adnominal can refer to an adjective or a noun.

jusar ŋator ('someone fast (among you)')
jusar kamma ('a/the chieftain (among you)')

lisar ŋator (someone fast)
nusar ŋator (something fast)

If it is known that at most one such individual can exist, the 2nd person plural possessive often marks the noun or adjective, i.e.

jusar kamma-un ('your chieftain' - assumed to be present)
jusar ŋator-un ('the fastest person among you')

Sometimes, the complement case is used both for adjectives and nouns:

jusar ŋatoɣ-ɣuv (in northwestern: jusaɣ ŋat:wuo)
jusar kammo-ɣuv (in northwestern: jusaš kaŋ:wuo)

In early modern Ŋʒädär and still in northern and northwestern Ŋʒädär, this marks a weakened certainty of the presence of such a person. In central and southwestern, it has rather come to be used with irrealis verb forms and questions.

Ŋʒädär: Pondering Participles

These are just some early musings on a part of Ŋʒädär grammar. It is not very structured, but is provided as a sort of glimpse into how it comes along.

I have recently been tinkering with the participle system of Ŋʒädär. To go in a bit of an unusual direction I figured I should use a system of pre- and postposited particles to form them. This would give some nice advantages with regards to coming up with grammar: bracketing strategies, ('dance- and singing', "see -en and -ing"), potentially interesting grammaticalization paths (with the same particles having other uses in other parts of the language), and just a system that generates a lot of text in a grammar.

I want a somewhat "suboptimal system", i.e. one where a subset of possible combinations do not lend themselves to any very smooth construction but require full or near-full forms.

One strategy for reducing the optimality could be having some of the forms that are in complementary distribution have the opposite bracketing type: maybe present participles have postpositions and past participles have prepositions:

en eat -> eaten
eat ing -> eating

Maybe for a few quirky verbs, 'en VERB ing' has a special meaning. 

This far, I think the Ŋʒädär participle system will at its core have two tenses x two voices, but the voices will be integrated with the animacy hierarchy in a way that doesn't make it "passive vs active" but rather something like ...:
intransitives take a low marker with low animacy nouns and a high marker with high animacy nouns.

With transitive verbs
low animacy nouns x low animacy marker: active / reflexive
low animacy nouns x high animacy marker: passive
high animacy nouns x higher animacy marker: passive
high animacy nouns x high animacy marker: reflexive
high animacy nouns x low animacy marker: active

Historically, a preposited particle might be a conjunction and a (dummy?) pronoun or even a noun of some sort. A postposited particle might originate with an auxiliary verb or a postposition. These differences in origin may be reflected in different available markings - TAM, etc. One further type of origin for participle particles could be discourse particles.

Some modal distinctions that are even absent in the finite verb might pop up in the participles, but I think the grammaticalization path for those modalities needs to have a reach that would not have hit the finite verbs.

Ŋʒädär: Further with the Reciprocal

It has previously been stated that the reflexive pronoun ŋul- in Ŋʒädär can encode both reflexive and reciprocal meaning, but that the difference is encoded in whether the pronoun is high in the animacy hierarchy (which implies reciprocality) or low (which implies reflexivity). However, no general reciprocal / reflexive distinction was presented.

Also, the various approaches for reciprocality that exist in Ŋʒädär are not entirely trivial, and we'll find that a variety of interesting behaviours happen with regards to it.

1. Lexical Distinctions (intransitive vs. reciprocal vs. reflexive)
Some intransitive verbs have their meaning changed by turning them into reciprocals or reflexives.

 A few examples include

ʒgaŋ(uk)- 'be part of a tribe or family'
talpa-hus ʒgaŋ-sa

talpa	-hus	ʒgaŋ	-sa
talpa (proper noun)	comitative	be affiliated	1 sg/(intransitive/3sg)-direct
the Talpa clan	with	belong	I

dat ŋul-ır ʒgaŋ-da-z

dat	ŋul	-ır	ʒgaŋ	-da	-z
we	self	plur nom	belong	1pl/(intransitive/3sg)-direct	direct
we	selves		belong	1 pl

we belong to the same family unit (rather wider than core family, though)

dat	ŋul	-ır	ʒgaŋ	-da	-jut
we	self	plur nom	belong	1pl/(intransitive/3sg)-direct	inverse
we	selves		belong	1 pl

we belong to the same clan

2. Non-object Reciprocal vs. Reflexive distinctions

There is an adverb ıbars, cognate to the -bara suffix. It can signify something along the line of 'in haphazard, random disarray' -

dat	ıbars	ban	-da
we	around	run	1pl/intransitive
we	around	are running

we are running around / we are running all over the place

It can also be used for transitive verbs to signify e.g. sending things all around, doing something in multiple places, etc. However, it can also signify reciprocality. Some verbs in Ŋʒädär have suppletive forms for different recipients, and with these, for instance, ıbars will signify reciprocality:

 ür karos ıbars kep'är-ür-z
'you give each other gifts'

(note: karos, "gift" is non-count!)
The same holds with other verbs of giving, but also goes with less semantically specific verbs, albeit there is some ambiguity:

sint ıbars vörvör-täs
'they speak over each other/they speak in all directions/they speak random stuff/they argue'

Ŋʒädär: Introduction to the Perfective side of the TAM system

Beyond the reduplication mentioned here, Ŋʒädär is rich in moods and aspects. Its tense system permits rather complicated things by auxiliaries, but for a clause without an auxiliary, there are two tenses: past and non-past, which are not distinguished in all moods. Auxiliaries are used for specific times such as 'yesterday', and in combination with aspect forms, obtain forms like 'until yesterday', 'since yesterday', 'intermittently a long time ago', etc.

Non-past is generally not marked by any morpheme, although a handful of verbs do get the marker -vul/vıl/vil/vül- in the inverse when the verb is non-past, instead of the usual marker. These are verbs of perception, of opinion, and of mental states in general. The morpheme originates with the noun *vurl that in Proto-ŊƷD signified the 'soul' of animals. The reason for this only appearing in the non-past tense may originate with some kind of belief that animal cognition did not much care about the past - that animals were more present-centered than man, and this fits with ideas about animal psychology in ŊƷD superstitions throughout the ŊƷD tribes.

The past is marked by a suffix after the aspect marker, but before the person marking. This suffix appears in the realis, optative and dubitative, and takes the form -(I)c'l(I)-.

Beyond this, we get the aspect system. The location of the aspect marker is immediately after the verb root, sometimes causing slight morphophonological alterations of the root itself. The perfective marker has somewhat merged with modal markers.

Perfective, realis:

-mOl-

After stops, this mutates into

-wOl-

Before velar sounds and -w-, the -l- is lost, and before -v-, it's lost while turning the -v- into -w-.  The -m-/-w- part can cause a variety of other things as well: -pw- and -tw- tend to become -kw-. -nm- becomes -m(:)- or -n(:)-. Depending on dialect, -wm- becomes -m(:)-.

Note: intrinsically perfect verbs do not take this marker, unless the perfectivity is emphasized.

Infinitives do not form perfectives by agglutination, but rather as phrases consisting of two infinitives, with the second infinitive being 'modan', which never appears in any inflected form (since it has been subsumed into the morphology of the finite verb.)

Perfective, optative:

-mUksA-

After stops, this mutates into

-wUksA-, where if U = u, the w- further vanishes.

The -m(closed vowel)- part of these morphemes comes from a particle, 'mod', which was a reduction of the verb 'took' and came to signify perfectiveness. -ksA- comes from a similar particle, 'okta', which signified 'maybe'. The optative perfect is always intransitive. If the verb usually would be transitive, the perfect optative is understood as a passive.

Perfect, conditional

-OlOb-

If followed by a morpheme beginning in a labial, this turns into -OlwO-.

The historical origin is a noun olob, signifying 'circumstance, case, chance, fate'.

Perfective, imperative:

-rOn (sg)
-rOndA (pl)

From the imperative form of the verb 'go'. The marker that exists in other related languages had been lost, and the auxiliary 'go!' slowly was merged into the verb morphology. Certain verbs have their own exceptional forms.

Perfective, dubitative

The dubitative marks things that are somewhat unsure. The historical origin is a suffix -EŋdzE, whose further origins probably lie in an assimilated auxiliary. The suffix now is -ŋŋE

Ŋʒädär: The Conditional

The conditional verb in Ŋʒädär (marked by -OlOb- directly on the stem) can be used for a variety of uses, even strictly indicative/realis uses. It has three main usages:

1. Irrealis / Conditional

The presence of -OlOb- on a verb is most commonly used to signal a conditional construction. Usually, both the protasis and apodosis are marked with -OlOb-, especially if they are of the same tense. However, if if the protasis is in the past, and the apodosis in the present, you sometimes only get -OlOb- on the protasis. The protasis often comes before the apodosis, but this is not mandatory. In the case of the protasis coming after, however, the postposition -ok'an is mandatorily suffixed to the verb or to a third person dummy obviative pronoun. Here, a slight indication that the irrealis is somewhat 'infinitive-like' appears.

2. Statements about VPs

What in English would be expressed as 'it is unfortunate/good/... that ..." would, in Ŋʒädär be constructed as

unfortunate/good/... VP (with V having -OlOb-)

An interesting difference is that for proper adjectives, use of the absolutive indicates that the statement is realis, whereas use of the complement case indicates that the statement is irrealis. For nouns, it is dative vs. complement, where the dative indicates realis. For "improper adjectives" (or adverbally inclined adjectives, see this), the distinction is maintained by omitting the absolutive marker in the realis, and the use of the complement case in the irrealis.

3. Denoting wishes and desires

If used in a statement with no apparent apodosis, and no apparent adjective or NP (or even other VP) to parse as qualifying the quality of the statement,  -OlOb- cannot be parsed as marking neither a condition nor a result, and will be parsed as expressing a desired circumstance.

Ŋʒädär and Ćwarmin Phonologies and Correspondences: Vowels pt 1

This post has been under work for a very long time. Now that it is done, Ćwarmin, Ŋʒädär and even Dagurib stuff might start appearing at a steadier pace.
Ŋʒädär has a much larger vowel inventory than its relative Ćwarmin has:

Front		Back
Unrounded	Rounded	Unrounded	Rounded
i	ü	ɯ	u
e	ö	ɤ	o
	ä*		a

/ä/ is not strictly speaking rounded, but mostly patterns with the rounded vowels as far as distribution goes.

A thoroughly consistent orthography that occurred to me, but is somewhat unwieldy and has a weirdly placed <e> would be the following:

Front		Back
Unrounded	Rounded	Unrounded	Rounded
ï	ü	ı	u
ë	ö	e	o
	ä		a

I am not going to use this orthographical system,
but it is appealing in some way.

Halfway through typing this thing, I realized the best way of representing the vowel system would probably be this, and I will be editing old posts on Ŋʒädär to conform to this system. Changes are marked with bold typefaces: 

Front		Back
Unrounded	Rounded	Unrounded	Rounded
i	ü	ı	u
e	ö	ə	o
	ä		a

 /ä/ is not necessarily as rounded as ü and ö, but patterns with them.

Diphthongs currently basically exist in the following forms in Ŋʒädär:

Opening: ie, üö, öä. ıə, uo,oa
Closing: äe, äü, ei, a͜u, əı, aə

Diphthongs in Ŋ originate in several different situations in PŊƷD: long vowels under some circumstances, original diphthongs, vowels in hiatus, vowels with semivowels, vowels in combination with certain consonants, stressed vowels in open syllables.

The front unrounded and back unrounded vowels in Ŋʒädär are separate phonemes, and not allophones triggered by different vowel harmony situations. Minimal tuplets exist, like

ri - day, today (from *dzij)
rı - weak (from *rig or *rix ?)
rü? - is this so? (from *rü)

dəb - sweet (from *dɛɔb)
deb - niece (from *deib)
döb - belt (from *düǧp')
dob - plate (from *dob)

Compare this system to the much reduced Ćwarmin system:

Front (-Centre)		Back
i		u
e	ə	o
		a

Diphthongs: ie, ei, əi, eə, əe, ua, au, ou, oa. Diphthongs only appear in morpheme-initial syllables.

We find the following cognates to the Ŋʒädär words not preserving the minimal-pair:ness on account of vowel harmony, but on account of other phonemic distinctions, here, some cognate Ćwarmin vocabulary:

zi, ziti - day, today (from *dzij)
rəŋi - loose, soft (from *rig:ə or *riǧ:ə, derived from *rig or *rix by -də suffix)
-ri/-ru - suffix that marks doubtfulness (from *rü)

dəp - honey
listep - sister-in-law (*lins-deib > linstep > listep), where lins- originally signified 'by marriage', and was restricted to use with women, the corresponding male term being 'oŋx-')
dep - a strap used for carrying certain kinds of things
(no cognate to dob)

In Ćwarmin, non-initial PĆŊ diphthongs have been monopthongized, whereas some open, initial syllables have diphthongized. The system out of which these two systems originate may have looked something like this:

Front (Neutral)	Front Round	Back Round
i	ü	u
e	(ö)	o
ɛ		ɔ
	ä	a

possible reconstructed vowel system
for Proto-Ćwarmin-Ŋʒädär

PĆŊ diphthongs come in a few types with different outcomes. The first group consisted of an onset round vowel tailing toward  neutral vowels, thus

üi, äi, öi, ui, ai, oi, aɛ, uɛ, oɛ, üɛ, äɛ

If /ɔi/ and /ɔɛ/ existed, they seem to have been merged with /oi/ and /ɔɛ/ already by the time Ŋʒädär and Ćwarmin diverged. Sound-change-wise, in Ćwarmin these sometimes leave a slight change on the next consonant:

PĆŊ: üisɛ > üśɛ > iśə (wind > breeze, Ćwarmin)
PĆŊ: uik'ɛs > uć'ɛs > ućos (louse > bug)
PĆŊ: airaw > aʒaw > aʒo (high up > tall (of animate things))
PĆŊ: noɛg > noj (narrow > close)
PĆŊ: ǧoibi > fobu (dull > clumsy)

In Ŋʒädär, these diphthongs often remain in initial syllables, but tend to become uniform as far as frontness or backness goes. /i/ in the second syllable can cause back vowels to front.

PĆŊ: üisɛ > üise (wind > cold)
PĆŊ: uik'ɛs > uık'əh (louse > itch)
PĆŊ: airaw > aırau (not attested)
PĆŊ noɛg > noək (narrow > any physical constriction)
PĆŊ ǧoibi > ǧöibi > ʒöibi (dull > inferior (of the quality of things))

The second set of diphtongs would be open ones to close ones within one harmony group:

ei, ɛi, ou, au, äy, öy

In Proto-Ŋʒädär, these first become long vowels of the first type:

e:, :, o:, a:, ä:, ö:

By the time of Ŋʒädär, this length distinction had been lost.
Proto-Ćwarmin kept these intact. Ćwarmin happens to behave almost identically to Ŋʒädär in these regards, but cognate languages on both sides diverge on this. The only difference between Ŋ and Ć is that  /au/ and /a:/ become /o/.

A final type of diphtong consists of front-to-back or back-to-front movement. In Ŋʒädär, these generally moved to the backness of the latter part, and then eliminated that latter part in Ŋʒädär. In Ćwarmin, the latter part often becomes a consonant:

dɛɔb > dəɔb > dəb (Ŋʒädär)
dɛɔb > dɛwb > dəjb (Ćwarmin, unattested)

The diphtongs in PŊĆ seem more to have consisted of "point of departure + direction", and the actual end point does not seem to have made any difference. So /ɛi/ sometimes may well have come out /ɛe/, and /au/ may well have come out /ao/ in actual pronunciation.

In the Dagurib branch, most languages do not have vowel harmony. Dagurib itself, however, retains many traces of an almost nascent vowel harmony that just about caught on. The vowel system below is from the insular Dagurib language Ěvusǐb.

Front		Back
Tense	Lax	Lax	Tense
i	ǐ	ǔ	u
e	ě	ǒ	o
			a

In Dagurib, an additional (tense) /y ö/ exist, and the cognates of ǔ and ǒ are endolabial mid vowels, giving:

Front			Back
Tense		Lax	Lax	Tense
Unrounded	Rounded	Unrounded	Endolabial	Rounded
i	ü	ǐ	ǔ	u
e	ö	ě	ǒ	o
				a

In Ŋʒädär, some morphemes will have harmony that adheres to (almost) all features of the previous vowel. Most words are either fully front or fully back, but exceptions exist. This system probably evolved out of a system not entirely unlike that of Finnish, but with the back vowels causing retraction of the "neutral" vowels {i, e}. An opposite situation whereby neutral vowels {ı, ɤ} were fronted is unlikely on typological grounds. In Ćwarmin, the system went through quite a different set of changes, merging the neutral vowels with back vowels, so /i, e/ in words with back harmony became /u, o/. Meanwhile /ü/ merged with /i/, and {ö} with {e, ə} in ways where stress as well as surrounding consonants influenced the outcome.

Phonotactically, early Proto-Ŋʒädär seems to have had a restriction whereby the second syllable of a root either had an unrounded vowel, or the same vowel as the previous syllable. Diphthongs only occurred in the first syllable or in open final syllables. A variety of changes where consonants and partial harmony have interacted have led to this system changing, and now the only restriction that exists with regard to vowel distribution is the vowel harmony itself.

The Proto-[[ĆŊ]-Dagurib] vowel system probably was even more complicated, due to various changes that cannot be accounted for by an eight-vowel system with two sets of harmonizing vowels and two neutral vowels. It is, however, somewhat unlikely that Proto-ĆŊD had vowel harmony.

To Be Right in my Conlangs

To express the sentiment of being right in my conlangs, a number of slightly different constructions are used. However, first a quick overview of being right in the languages I speak and a few more.

In Finnish, the usual way would be olla oikeassa, essentially 'to be in (the) right'. In Swedish, however, the expression is ha rätt, 'to have right'. This also seems to be the way of expressing it in German, recht haben. Russian has прав, 'right, true' as a complement, so e.g. ты прав, "you (are) right/true". Onto languages I don't speak: The French and Italian expressions seem to be analogous - although 'to have reason' seem to be more literal translations. Spanish is a bit like Finnish, although with 'in truth' (en cierto) rather than 'right'.  Bear in mind that I might be wrong on any of those beyond Finnish, Swedish, English and Russian. As a side note, for Finnish, English, German and Russian, there's a clear connection to right (the direction or side).

So, onto the conlangs!

Bryatesle

In Bryatesle, being right is expressed using a verb that is closely related to the verb 'carry', verg, in the perfective aspect, with a quirky case subject, viz. the ablative.

tërty virg-a
you.abl carry-perf.3sg
you're right

In isolation, virga sometimes is used to express 'you're right'.

Ćwarmin

In Ćwarmin, being right is expressed by the demonstrative adverb olba/elbə ('this') in an adverbial form, olbaru, elbəri (essentially 'like this, like so, thus') or in the nominative definite olbutu, elbiti.  The construction with olbaru/elbəri uses the reflexive possessive accusative:

bec olbarsun
you thus-refl.poss.acc
~you have thus
you are right

The olbutu/elbiti form comes with the dative of whomever is right:

un olbutu
(s)he.dat right.nom.def(s)he is right

Dairwueh

Unlike Bryatesle, Dairwueh uses the verb əduin, 'hold', but like Bryatesle, it uses a quirky case subject: the genitive. The verb is in the 3rd person II.

vedin ŋe ədu-ar
I.gen was.3sg hold-past.prtcpl
"my was held"
I was right

Ŋʒädär

Ŋʒädär has a reflexive, locative expression. 

(sint) prä-ŋä-bürs-äz ŋul-ər
(they) right-at-3pl/3pl-direct self-plur
they are right

Prän does in fact have a slight typological similarity to 'right', although it signifies a different type of direction: in fact, it signifies the east. prä-ŋä thus also signifies "in the east", but the only situation in which this appears with transitive marking is when signifying 'being right'. For those who haven't read how the reflexive works in Ŋʒädär, here's a post.

Sargaĺk

Sargaĺk uses a reduplication-like construction:

(ne-tta) tvadas tvadas yəra-si
I-peg truth truth put-1sg
I put truth (to) truth
I am right

Clearly, the pegative of the subject suggests that the two instances of "truth" are considered different constituents, however - one being a direct object and one an indirect object. Hence the (to) in the word-for-word English translation. Here, as well, the subject pronoun can be omitted.

Case Prefixes: Dagurib and Solgır

Dagurib was the first branch in the ĆŊ family to diverge from the rest. Through its history, however, it has been in extensive contact with the Ŋʒädär branch, and due to its relatively small number of speakers - for most of the time, only about 5% of the ĆŊ population - it generally does not provide much data with regards to early ĆŊ or even ĆŊD linguistics. However, many Dagurib languages have conserved a feature that is also shared by Solgır (a Ŋʒädär language), and which also has left traces throughout the family. These are the case prefixes.

The case prefixes are always single segments - in Solgır a-, n-, r-, e-, ä-, o-, q-, k-, f-, in Banar (a Dagurib language) m-, l-, z-, i-, a-, -ä-, u-, k-, k'-, p-, in Dagurib m-, l-, s-, i-, a-, ä-, u-, ü-, k'-, p'-. Some words just take them in some cases, and what cases they take them with differs from noun to noun. Sometimes, a noun whose stem begins in any of these is reanalyzed, and the segment is lost in all forms but a few.

A system of this kind seems unlikely to develop by itself twice in separate branches, and would therefore rather seem likely to be a reduced retention of a previous system. This is further supported by the fact that in other Ŋʒädär, Dagurib and even Ćwarmin languages, there are words where cognates have random-looking losses of initial elements. (Or is that random additions of initial elements?) Further down, we'll see some examples of cognate-sets where potential prefixes could explain some of the alternations between forms.

The Solgır and Dagurib prefixes do not seem to mark anything – the distribution is lexically determined. Essentially, for some nouns, some cases for that noun take some prefix. An extreme example would be the Solgır noun ermi, rope.

	sing	plur
abs	ermi	ermeyi
dat	fermen	ermeyin
abl	ermelin	kermeylin
loc	kermene	kermeyine
lat	ermeli	fermeyli
gen	nermeni	nermeynit
instr	ermerik	nermeyrik

The particular prefixes do not belong to any particular case and can appear with different cases for different nouns. Mostly though, any noun with these prefixes will only showcase one particular prefix - tho' in some Dagurib languages, a certain free variation between two prefixes or between a prefix and none is well attested.

The historical origin for these prefixes is shrouded in mystery - they probably have communicated something in proto-ĆŊD, but the lack even of hints as to what that might have been prevents reconstruction of it.

Nouns that hint of the presence of such a system in proto-ĆŊ can be found. Some of these also have cognate examples even in Dagurib. Such examples will be marked with a + in the Ćwarmin cell or Ŋʒädär cell.

Here are some examples within the Ćwarmin branch:

Ćwarmin		Rasmjinj		Ətimin		Astami
+ruanas	hair	wanos	hair	ronas	a hair	uonoh	fur
arać	skin	karos	leather	karaš	skin	karaś	skin
+nitis	thing	njidjis	thing	iedəs	thing	itih	thing
səkin	tally mark	ädʒin	property mark	seəčən	personal 'flag' on tents	səki	property mark
+els	oath	felz	oath	feləs	oath	hel	oath
maruw	liver	aru	liver	-	-	maru	liver
+ənve	chin	pänne	cheek	peənyə	chin	-	-
+maso	grass	amozo	grass	mazo	grass	amoh	grass
əced	bridle	ced	bridle	ceəd	bridle	əcet	halter
deǧe	prayer	deǧe	prayer	ədeje	prayer	ado
kinim	braid	ičinjin	braid	čienən	braid	ikini	woven material

The Dagurib cognates are:

ruanas - (r)ouno
nitis - (l)iti
els - (k')eili
ənve - (m)einyi
maso - (m)eizyi (due to random vowel harmony reassignment)

Within the Ŋʒädär branch these are a few examples:

Ŋʒädär		Törǧdär		Suwdan
+soman	home	oma	home	sömä*	home
iqe(-k)	man	miqe(-q)	man	liqe	man
ragaz	bumblebee	aragaz	bumblebee	arga	wasp
+anək	animal	ranık	livestock	anə	calf
+ästil	pelt	stıl	fur	istil	fur

*Süwdän has had an unusually large share of seemingly random vowel harmony changes; in ĆŊ, the vowel-harmony conservation ratio for 1000 years is something like 98%; for Süwdän, however, it seems the percentage is closer to 90%.

The Dagurib cognates are

soman - (p')amai- (house)
anək - (m)aŋu- (reindeer)
iqe(-k) - (i)q- (member of the tribe)
ästil - (ü)t(:)i- (clothing)

The situation seems to be that the prefix has been generalized to all the forms or none of the forms in the languages that have lost the prefixes, and rather randomly at that.

More examples can be found between the branches, and the Dagurib family itself is particularly rich with these, and especially with traces in those languages that only more recently have lost the prefixes as a grammatical feature.

Ŋʒädär: Becoming, Turning, Starting, Increasing, Changing

Becoming something, turning into something, starting out doing something, increasingly being something and changing are all somewhat similar notions. So, there's probably very little surprise that Ŋʒädär approaches these in similar ways. However, it also introduces an interesting distinction between different ways things change or begin or turn.

Certain intransitive verb suffixes in Ŋʒädär take a special third person morpheme, even though the usual third person finite present verb takes no such suffix. This suffix is -n.

For "turning adjectival" or "beginning to verb", similar structures appear:

[adjectival stem] [-lUA-] [TAM and intransitive person congruence markers]

[verbal stem] [-lUA-] [TAM and intransitive person congruence markers]

caban bör(ü)l-ät sarctu-lua-bra-n
road spring-dat.pl rough-get-HAB-3sg_intr_pres
the road gets rough in spring

The -lUA morpheme has a Ćwarmin cognate, -lgU-, which only appears in a few lexical items. In both the Ćwarmin cognates and the Ŋʒädär case, -lUA only signifies changes over time, not changes over space. Thus, if the terrain gets rougher to the west, a different morpheme is used:

[stem] [-(A)rgA] [TAM + intr. person]

caban sıvlı-vımə sarctu-rga-n
road west-through rough-get
the road gets rough towards the west

For more abstract "spaces" over which something changes, both are used:

k'or-gəvi dənt'ı-rga-s-t
salt-on-account-of thirsty-get-1sg_intr-pp*

k'or-gəvi dənt'ı-lua-s-t

"I got thirsty due to (the) salt"

The  acquisition of mass nouns can also use both of these. Most dialects prefix the noun oblique stem by GI- and suffix -LUA-:

gı-təŋə-lua-n
GI-dust-acquire-3sg
it gathers dust

The GI- prefix has some lenition before i: ji- vs. gı-. 

Beginning to do something usually takes -lUA on the verbal stem. If one begins to do something due to geographical location, -rgA can also be used, but is less common since in some sense verbs tend to be distributed temporally.

For becoming [a noun] two approaches are in common use. The first method distinguishes volitionality of the subject. The second signals the definiteness of the complement. The first uses the verb to be with the -lua suffix: ihlüä...
Volition marking is optional, so the lack of such a marker does not imply lack of volition, it only permits for it. The marker is the presence of the reflexive pronoun:

Arbas kamma-ɣuv ihlüä-n
Arbas chieftain-compl become-3sg
Arbas becomes (a) chieftain

Arbas kamma-ɣuv ŋul-ʒuv ihlüä-n
Arbas kamma-ɣuv ŋul ihlüä-3sg
Arbas chieftain-compl self become
Arbas (has applied himself and therefore) becomes (a) chieftain

The reflexive pronoun seems to appear in both the complement case and in the absolutive case. The complement case probably is a result of some kind of dislike for having two absolutive arguments with an intransitive verb and then going for the other case that is present in the clause. This varies from speaker to speaker and community to community.

The other method used ŋul- as the root for the verb:

Arbas kamma-ɣuv ŋul-(l)ua-n
Arbas chieftain-compl self-begin-3sg
Arbas becomes the chieftain

The Ŋʒädär constructions for these are unique to the Ŋʒädär branch of the Ćwarmin-Ŋʒädär-Dagurib languages. The Dagurib branch retains a less synthetic set of constructions with some cognates to the Ŋʒädär -lUA and -ArgA morphemes. The Ćwarmin branch only has a very small number of cognates, and is using quite different constructions.

Ŋʒädär: Possessive Suffixes

The statements here hold for most of the Ŋʒädär branch, and also widely for the Dagurib branch of Ŋʒädär-Ćwarmin languages.

Pronouns as possessors are generally not present as words unto themselves, but as suffixes of the

	absolutive possessum				dative possessum		oblique possessum
	singular proximative	plural proximative	obviative		proximative	obviative	proximative	obviative
1 sg	-sA	-sAr	-s		-As	-sOt	-As- or -sA-	-sIs-
1 pl	-dA	-dAr	-dAx		-Ad	-Od-	-Ad- or -dA-	-dIs-
2 sg	-Un	-nUr	-nUx		-Un	-On-	-Un- or -nU-	-nIs-
2 pl	-Ur	-rUr	-rUx		-Un	-On-	-Ur- or -rU-	-nIs-
3 prox	-sI	-sIr	-sIx		-Is	-IsI-	-sI- or -Is-	-Is-
3 obv	-	-	-(O)q(O)		-	-(O)q(O)-	-	-(I)qIs-

The location of these suffixes vary; the absolutive suffixes go word-finally, and replace the case marker completely. This conflates the singular and plural obviative distinction for the possessum. The dative suffix goes finally for proximative datives, but before the case suffix for obviative ones. The number distinction is lost with dative possessums. The obviative dative suffixes require the plural dative marker, even if the possessum is singular - this same pattern appears with the obviative marker for the dative.

For the obliques, the possessive suffix goes before the case suffixes, and replaces number and obviative markers.

Second person singular and plural are conflated in some positions.

Proximative nouns cannot have obviative possessors. Third person non-personal pronominal possessors (i.e. indefinites and such) may cause the possessum to take the 3rd person obviative marker, but this seems highly optional, possibly emphasizing the type of pronoun of the possessor.

Uses for these include, beyond possessors, object suffixes on some participles, subject suffixes on others. The word 'and', on also can take the absolutive singular proximative forms (or the obviative -q(O), to signify 'and (pronoun)', or '(pronoun) too' and similar things. These forms further can take regular case suffixes, getting forms like onsam 'and to me, to me too', ondaŋa 'and at you, at you too'. Finally, some adjectives can take these for complements, including p'ürkör (similar to X), so p'ürkörüx = similar to you(pl), korqəl (related to), korqəlas-[case congruence]. Different adjectives may take different suffixes here: p'ürkör takes absolute obviative or plural proximative in numeric congruence with the noun that is similar to someone; p'ürkör does not take congruence when it has a possessive suffix. Korqəl always takes case congruence with the head noun, and therefore follows the full complexity of the table above. The third type can be exemplified by varın-, "appealing (to X)" (always dat. prox. poss. forms).

Thus, we have three classes: I (p'ürkör-like adjectives), II (korqəl-like adjectives) and III (varın-like adjectives).

Some examples:

I

kostan- (unappealing to)
mitkis- (insufficient for)

vinei- (too small for)

irib- (angry at)

II

gərəs- (loyal (to X))

sork'o- ( thankful (to X))
nüre- (infatuated (with X))

sajan- (married (to X), only used for the wife

III

ökäm- (married (to X), only used for the husband

sacıd- (insufficient for)

akom- (too much (for X))

t'ebä- (dear (to X))

Ŋʒädär Cases: Grammatical Subsystems as Bundles of Features pt I

Sometimes systems in languages can be analyzed in terms of feature bundles. This can work for cases, tenses, moods, lexical subsystems (say, family terminology, or such), etc. This article will look into the case systems of several of my languages, attempting to find some economical yet powerful description of the case systems.

Ŋʒädär has a fairly simple case system:

The absolute marks subjects and objects. The dative marks recipients. The genitive-comitative marks possessors or accompanying participants. The three locatives - locative, lative and ablative - have similarities, but there is an odd one out among them. The complement case has certain similarities to the absolute case.

We find beyond these that there is an unabsolutive case for certain nouns. Counting the regular cases we have seven, and the unabsolutive would give us eight. log₂8 is 3, so the most optimal case would only have three binary variables. Let us first look at the seven 'common' cases before taking a look at the unabsolutive.

It seems three basic qualities distinguish the three cases: involvement, direction and centrality. Involvement is whether the noun is a participant in any way whatsoever, or just a frame or scaffold for the action. Direction is whether there is a spatial progress involving the noun as some form of source or sink, and 'centrality' largely corresponds to likelihood of being topicalized or focalized but also the likelihood of being an argument.

	participant	directional	central
absolutive	+	-	+
dative	+	+	+
ablative	?	+	-
lative	-	+	-
locative	-	-	-
genitive-comitative	+	-	-
complement	-	?	+

The question marks indicate that the relevant spots seem to go both ways. The ablative thus can acquire the same meaning as the lative in some contexts, but can also acquire a distinct meaning. We can expand this by having both the complement and the ablative appear as two versions of themselves - giving a total of nine, but this is ok since ablative² is the same as lative as far as its features go.

	participant	central	directional
dative	+	+	+
absolutive	+	+	-
ablative+	+	-	+
genitive-comitative	+	-	-
complement+	-	+	+
complement-	-	+	-
lative	-	-	+
ablative-	-	-	+
locative	-	-	-

here, the cases are ordered assuming participant > central > directional

By now we have exhausted the number of states three binary variables can occupy, so the unabsolutive wouldn't fit into this. We could attempt to rearrange this so that we get rid of the question marks and express both the complement and ablative in terms that do not require them to occupy two different states - however, this particular setup will prove useful to understand the shenanigans of the case systems. We shall rearrange the system a bit for a truly full three-variable system without any cases occupying two slots, and using a different set of features that better catch the "morphological reality". The middle column has different values for the upper and lower half.

	potential participant	active core case/ framing non-core case	"associate" reference
dative	+	-	+
absolutive	+	+	-
ablative	+	-	+
genitive-comitative	+	+	-
complement	-	+	-
lative	-	-	-
locative	-	+	+
unabsolutive	-	-	+

This model also has its drawbacks; 'active core case' signifies cases that (can) participate in an action, but obviously the absolutive can be the object as well, and quirky case verbs can take datives that do things. Framing is a question of locating a VP or subject either spatially or conceptually. Associate reference is whether a noun in such a case necessarily refers to a noun's referent itself or possibly to things associated therewith - i.e. the locative may be marked upon a noun the vicinity of which is referred to (whereas the lative more usually goes on the name of a place, or a noun on the inside or top of which something moves). 

Asking what features an NP satisfies for these two schemes gives a pretty good idea of what case an NP in Ŋʒädär takes, but even then the two models give some mistakes. Similar models for Ćwarmin would be huge, but Bryatesle, Sargaĺk and Dairwueh may get their own treatment among these lines. On the other hand, the interaction of number, case and definiteness in Ćwarmin could make for interesting models that demonstrate how weirdly intervowen those three really are in Ćwarmin.

Ŋʒädär: Residing and Wearing

Ŋʒädär conflates 'wearing' and 'residing' in one single lexeme. As an intransitive verb, it takes the location, or the clothing as an instrumental argument:

saə	taŋux	-ruk	käŋüt	-s
I	sheep skin	instrumenal	wear	intransitive
I	sheep skin		wear

I wear sheep skin

With transitive marking, it can mark 'to clothe' or 'to house':

sulkas	t'osmıg	-ar	käŋüt	-siqö	-jüt
village	fifteen	animate plural	wear/reside	3pl/3sg	indirect
village	fifteen	(people)	houses

the village houses fifteen people / has fifteen inhabitants

yajo	t'äne	-qi	käŋüt	-hiqö	-z
mother	daughter	obviative	clothe	3sgobv/3sgprox	direct
mother	daughter		dresses

the mother dresses (her) daughter

The origin of this verb is the PŊĆ root *kɛŋüst-, signifying 'protect, cover, hold'.

A few nouns are derived from this verb, e.g.

käŋürti - clothes
käŋüsmö - settlement
käŋele - anything that forms a natural protection against weather

There is a Ćwarmin cognate, keŋəc,  signifying 'fabric, cloth'.

The Ŋʒädär Vowel Harmony and its Development

Ŋʒädär's vowel system is somewhat more complicated than that of Ćwarmin. The following system, in fact, is the basic layout:

front unrounded	front rounded	back unrounded	back rounded
i	ü	ɯ <ı>	u
e	ö	ɤ <ə>	o
	ä		a

This originates with a slightly different system, the ancestor system of both Ŋʒädär and Ćwarmin:

front unrounded (neutral)	front rounded		back rounded
i	ü		u
e	ø		o
ɛ	œ		ɔ
	ɶ		ɒ

The symbols used are somewhat misleading: ɒ is not necessarily fully rounded, nor is ɶ. The distinction of e vs. ɛ, ø vs. œ etc was only maintained in stressed syllables. The vowels of the neutral column were also retracted significantly in words with back rounded vowels.

This originally allophonic retraction became phonological with the loss of a number of vowels in various positions, such as unstressed final short vowels after sibilants.

/'gisu/ ['gɯsu] > /gɯs/ sling
/'gise/ ['gise] > /gis/ feather

/'keza/ ['kezɒ] > /kɤz/ thing
/'keze/ ['keze] > /kez/ straw of grass

/ser'teʒi/ [ser'teʒi]> /ser'teʒ/ keep for later
/'sɛrteʒa/ ['sʌrtɤʒɒ] > /'sɤrtɤʒ/

Final vowels have thence reappeared due to loss of final -t, -p and -k after vowels. These have thence reappeared due to simplification of final clusters (-nk, -nt, -mp, -st, -sp, -sk, -rk, -rt, -rp). 

Another position where vowels have disappeared is unstressed initial ijV-, ıjV-, ıwV-, uwV-, etc. Of these, only uwV- and ar- affect vowel harmony in a regular and predictable manner (ij- and ıj- more randomly triggering fronting of back vowels).

/a'rik/ [ɒrɯk] > /rɯk/ knee
/rik/ [rik] > /rik/ shard
/u'wir/ [u'wɯr] > /wɯr/ dough
/i'wir/ [i'wir] > /wir/ soft

/u'jent/ [u'jɤnt] > /jɤt/ sleep (stem)
jent [jent] > /jet/ eyelid

Awareness of Vowel Harmony in the Ćwarmin-Ŋʒädär World

Although, much like in our world, vowel harmony comes in many different forms in the Bryatesle-Dairwueh-Sargaĺk-Ćwarmin-Ŋʒädär world, speakers of vowel harmony languages seem to be aware of it as a typological trait that is missing from some languages but present in some. In fact, all the tribes that speak vowel-harmony languages share a certain addendum to the just-so stories of why there are many languages.

The usual narratives throughout the continent do not per se attribute any subjective qualities to the languages themselves – the attributes generally refer to each language's suitability for being spoken in its environment, often using pretty bad reasoning about it. 

Often in these stories, the gods find that the world is less than it could be – mankind is organized, but badly. They find that the language that all mankind speaks is not good enough for the different needs the tribes have. Sometimes, a trickster god enters into the picture here, making the different languages be unintelligible - when this bit is present in the narrative, the gods usually planned for everyone to understand every language, but also for everyone to speak only the one relevant to their environment.

Now, speakers of languages with vowel harmony often add a little side plot to these narratives: the theme then being that some tribes were granted an aesthetical advantage over others: vowel harmony. Usually, the other groups are described as incapable of controlling some of their urges, and they thereby fail to live up to agreements they've done with the gods (or God) in exchange for getting their linguistic situation improved. 

As a punishment, "the beautiful sound of words", vowel harmony, was taken from them.

Ŋʒädär Person Morphology

Beyond its direct/inverse marker, Ŋʒädär does have some extent of person marking on its verb. There is, however, some extent of optionality to the markers.

Ŋʒädär has polypersonal verb agreement - it marks for both the subject and objects. Objects and subjects are not morphologically distinguished per se, neither in the nominal morphology nor in the verbal agreement system. Thus, the two dimensions of the agreement systems are not full cartesian products along the lines of (persons x numbers) x (persons x numbers). Since we have dealt with reflexives previously, we also can tell that there are no elements along the 'diagonal', with the exception of obviative/obviative

The columns represent the lower ranked element, the rows the higher ranked element. The inverse/direct morpheme tells which of the two is the subject.

	1 sg	2 sg	3 sg prox / intr.	3sg obv	1pl	2 pl	3 pl prox	3 pl obv
1sg		-sAvU-	-sA-	-sqO-	-zdA-	-zvUr	-tAs*-	-tAsqO*-
2sg			-U-	-UqO-	-dvU	-Ur-	-Us-	-UsqO-
3sg prox / intr			-ε- **	-h(I)qO-	-dA-	-Ur-	-s(I)-	-s(I)qO-
3sg obv				-qO**-	-dA-	-UrqO-	-s(I)qO-	-OqO-
1pl						-dAvUr-	-dAs-	-dAqO-
2pl							-Urs-	-UrQo-
3pl prox								-s(I)qO-
3pl obv

** the ε symbol signifies the empty string; for 3sg proximative, the form only permits an intransitive parsing; the 3sg obv / 3sg obv both permit an intransitive or transitive parsing. The 3sg. prox and 3sg. obv are also used with intransitive plural subjects.

* the initial -t of the suffix sometimes assimilates, along the following lines.

nt → n
lt → l
rt → r
st → s
qt → q
kt → k
pt → p
ft → t
mt → t
jt → j
ht → t
Voiced stops and voiced fricatives tend to turn into voiceless fricatives:
bt → ft
zt → st
dt → st
gt → xt
  ...

Interrogatives in Ŋʒädär, pt 1

The basic interrogatives come in two basic forms, corresponding quite closely to 'who' and 'what':

kaɣo, təɣə

the animate form has a plural absolutive as well:

kaɣant

Other than that, the case forms are conflated for plural and singular throughout the pronouns' paradigm:

dati.  kaɣam, təɣəm

lative kaɣlus, təɣlıs
locati. kaɣŋa, təɣŋo
ablat. kaɣluno, təɣlınə

gen-c. kaɣas, təɣəs
instru. kaɣak, təɣək
compl. kaɣuv, təɣıv

A similar pair of pairs of lexemes with similar morphological forms exist for 'pick one out of many' and 'pick one out of two'-questions. Both pairs have the same animate-inanimate distinction at their core, with the animate given to the left in the next lists.

One out of two:

abs. k'opo, roto
dat. k'opom, rotom
lat. k'oplus, rotus
loc. k'oŋa, roŋa
abl. k'opluno, rotuno
g-c. k'opos, rotos
ins. k'opok, rotok
cmp. k'opuv, rotuv

One (or more) out of several:

sg. abs.

camu, təmıt

pl.  abs

camant

The rest of the inanimate are identical to the what form, whereas the cam- forms are formed analogously to the other animate forms given in the tables above. -ml- turns to -vl- in most dialects, but to -mn- in the easternmost dialect.

Ŋʒädär has two words for 'when',

ɣok'nu, when, (future)
ɣok'oś, when, (past)

these also have demonstrative analogues:

əqnu, then, (future)
əqoś, then, (past)

Unlike the very absolute future/past distinction of the interrogative pair, the demonstrative pair seem to showcase a rather relative future/past distinction.