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.

Detail #13: Indefinite pronouns

Ever since reading Ye Merrye Conlangre's short description of the typology of indefinite pronouns, I have returned to it on occasion. Now it - alas - is not available as such anywhere else than through archive.org and maybe google cache. The machines hosting the copies available at archive.org seem a bit unstable, but at the writing moment at least this link worked. If it does not, search for "http://math.berkeley.edu/~apollo/my-conlangs/mcindpro.html" in archive.org.

The sample sentences I will use in this post are partially based on that short essay.

However, the categories given for different correlatives are as follows:

• known to speaker, not to listener
• not known to either speaker or listener
• irrealis, non-specific
• polar question
• conditional protasis
• direct negation
• indirect negation
• comparison (e.g. bigger than any other)
• free choice

The article provided lists some universals about which of these tend to be conflated - and a list of sample systems present in actual real-world languages.

I am thinking rather of doing something else with them - we could, of course, get rid of the pronouns and make them affixes or even give them their own verbal congruence markers or whatever, but that seems a bit boring as well.

I will end up suggesting an example system though, just so I can do something with it:

• I: direct and indirect negation are conflated, as well as polar questions
• II: free choice, standard of comparison, conditional protasis and irrealis, non specific likewise form one category
• III: specific, known to speaker forms one group
• IV: specific, unknown to speaker, conditional protasis and irrealis, non specific form one group (that partially overlaps with group #2)

Group I have their own congruence morpheme, third person negative object/subject. Group II simply lack congruence for the relevant role (note: the language has verb-like adpositions with some congruence, although the congruence is rather impoverished compared to the language in general, only marking one participant). Some verbs do introduce a linking vowel for morphophonotactical reasons. 

So, "bigger than my house" : big exceed.[3sg obj, appropriate gender etc] house.mine 

"bigger than any house": big exceed.[no marker] house

"bigger than the house": big exceed[3sg obj, appropriate gender etc] the house

Group III is marked by third person pronouns without person congruence. (Note that this limits specifik, known-to-speaker nouns to subjects and objects.)

He called[no person congruence], guess who! 

≃ someone called, guess who!

Group IV would be a separate pronoun, with optional third person marking on the verb, here the pronoun is ey :

if ey calls[3sg?] while I am out, tell[2sg subj, 3pl obj] to call[3pl subj, 1sg obj] later 

please go[2nd p. sg. subj] arrive[3sg object?] eywhere

ey stole[3sg?, 3sg obj] my car! 

Both could potentially omit the congruence element on the verb. Some irrealis modal marking on the verb could also contribute in example sentences one and two - possibly even omitting the pronoun?, whereas the third example is clearly indicative.

How to mark possession could be a bit more complex - but would probably have to interact with some strategies suggested elsewhere in this blog, maybe even such that the different pronouns use different approaches - possessive suffixes, possessive pronouns, voice rearrangements where subjects are owners of objects, ... possibly even omission of mandatory suffixes (analogous to the omission of verb congruence) ...

Other ways of arranging this could also be found - bigger than any house would seem to be rather a natural place to place an irrealis modal marker on the verb of comparison.

This would fit in some fairly synthetic language with loads of verbal congruence, and possibly possessive suffixes (and even more) on nouns.