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.

Comparison in Ŋʒädär

In Ŋʒädär, the adjective for which two NPs are compared is in the instrumental case:

pöntü-rük ('with rough', 'with coarse', in comparative structures: rougher, coarser)

 However, it is also inflected like a verb:

lesnı-rık-ta-jut '(s)he is faster than you'

If both nouns are third person, the lesser one is marked by a circumposition, Un-[dative]-bI.

To compare non-subjects - something like 'I like her more than him', one would rephrase it as 'I like her, she un_him_bi like_ptcpl_instrumental_(3sg)_direct', or 'me.dat she un_him_bi like_pass.ptcpl_instrumental_(3sg)_direct'.

For even more oblique comparison, such as 'it's better at home than in the forest', one would construct the sentence as

soman* un orvur-(u)m bı maba-rak-s
home (than) forest-dat (than) good-instr-intransitive

For oblique comparisons, there is no way of using the inverse and direct to compare nouns of different rank - the circumposition is necessary.

Detail #301: Lexicalized Paths becoming Verbalized

Most readers probably are aware of satellite-framed and verb-framed languages. This idea takes verb-framing to eleven – by introducing way more lexemes.

Let's consider a culture where a variety of terms for different types of paths exist. A significant number of specific, real-world roads, paths, sea lanes, and waterways in general have specific proper nouns.

So, basically, verbs of movement often derive from proper nouns. These have affixes expressing

• movement towards major location along the path 
• movement towards personally significant location along the path (home, ritually important place, hunting grounds, etc)
• movement away from a major location along the path
• movement close to that path, possibly zig-zagging over it
• movement up- or downstream with rivers, or uphill/downhill with very steep paths

Whenever movement along such a path is expressed, it is grammatically mandatory to use the path-specific verb. If no path is known, or the utterance refers to movement along paths in general, the verb is derived either from the four cardinal directions or more generic path-types.

The language doesn't let you walk, it lets you be moving along a named path, and maybe with an optional adverb that expresses 'walkingly'.

Detail #300: Suppletive "Half-Gender" Congruence

Consider a language with two genders, ostensibly masculine and feminine. Have another distinction that almost creates a four-way gender system:

{masculine, feminine} x {animate, inanimate}

or

{masculine, feminine} x {human, nonhuman}

Now, let's have some marker that goes on verbs sometimes (maybe, say, only in the present tense, or maybe only in realis, or whatever, the details are not so important). However, we get some verbs having a suppletive form for only one out of the four combinations:

	animate	inanimate
masculine	root1-	root1-
feminine	root1-	root2-

Each gender/animateness combination may be the one to get the exceptional form for some given verb. 

Of course, another thing can also happen: suppletive roots for the animate/inanimate distinction, but gender congruence according to masc/fem.

Sargaĺk Possession

Attributive possession in Sargaĺk has a few small complications:

• the possessor is in the pegative-genitive case
• if the possessum is in a locative case or the comitative cases, it remains in those cases
• if the possessum is in the pegative case, it remains in the pegative case
• if the possessum is in the nominative case, it will turn into the comitative or the familiar comitative case.

There are two basic ways of expressing "X has Y". The first, and most common with animate nouns has the following structure:

subj.peg₁ pronoun.nom₂ object.nom₂ is

Thus, the owner is the subject, and the possessum is represented by a personal pronoun (agreeing in gender with the possesssum), and a noun phrase, the direct object, that is the possessum itself.

Sometimes, the pronoun agrees with the subject, and most speakers seem to grasp this as meaning the same thing.

This is probably analogous to how the ergative in many languages can be used in constructions along the lines of

noun₁.erg noun₂ is

for meanings along the lines of noun₁ has noun₂. The extra pronoun serves to make it ditransitive and thus license the use of the pegative case. 

The other construction uses a dedicated verb, k'ir-. This is common with inanimate nouns, abstract nouns, and with an adjective for object, it expresses some command over a quality - an ability to control or use a quality.

Xivar c'oman k'ir : Xivar has a lot of endurance

Beyond this, k'ir in combination with an infinitive expresses ability:

Osini falməs k'ir-m
Osini read has.fem
Osini knows how to read

Literacy is very unusual in Sargaĺk villages, and so Osini would typically function as the village's record keeper and in an almost semi-diplomatic fashion when interacting with Ćwarmin and later Bryatesle-Dairwueh officials.

Sargaĺk Participles and their Use

I previously outlined the semantics and the morphology of the Sargaĺk participles. This post sets out to describe their syntax and their pragmatics.

Participles often serve a role comparable to relative subclauses in English. However, the strategy used to express similar ideas usually is one of using different styles of subordinated coordination: when the x was swimming, rather than the swimming x. The three voices of the participles enable some relative-clause-like structure for subjects, objects and recipients of the embedded verb.

Topics tend to prefer the use of separate, subordinate clauses.

An exhaustive list of "general" traits of which one to pick would be:

• "heavy" embedded VPs are more often rendered as subclauses than by participles
• "heavy" clauses with an additional subclause that could be rendered by a participle often have participles rather than an additional subclause
• topics prefer subclauses
• focus prefers participles
• certain participles form compound-like lexical structures, and these form an inseparable unit with their head noun. These generally have very full case congruence, and their evidentiality is inferential*. Examples include
• "xalval ecdo", sweating house or house that sweats, essentially 'sauna'. xalval is not a gerund or anything like that; to some extent, this is a sort of implicit causative, 'house that sweats (you)'.

Beyond the use of participles as attributes in NPs, we have the use of participles with auxiliaries. Participles can be combined with the copula to form statements a bit like "X is verbing Y". The binary copula is only used when emphasizing a positive answer to a yes-no-question. Other than that, the copula-construction is almost always used when the subject is the focus. Thus, a focused subject enforces evidentiality marking in its VP.

Objects and recipients too can, by voice markings on the participle, be marked in this way, but this is somewhat less common.

A handful of auxiliaries require participles:

sanət - be [reputed to/inferred to/seen to/heard to/...] verbThis requires the active form of the present or past participle. (Uninflected). This auxiliary basically emphasizes the content of the evidentiality marker.

xk'arp- - resume

mər- continue

mərmər- continue despite attempts by others to stop one from doing

tomŕ- cease (participle in the ablative)

Further, a lot of verbs lack some participle forms, e.g. verbs of perception often lack  non-primary perception evidentiality forms, verbs of verbal interaction often lack everything but second-hand forms, etc. For some of these, this is more of a conflation of forms, for others it seems more like an actual gap. Lack of past or present forms, or of passive or recipient forms is also not unusual.

Finally, there exists an adverbial case that only exists for participles. This signifies by doing. Its marker is -(k)o, which also reduces the previous syllable's vowel if morphophonologically possible. This conflates a fair share of forms as well.