Ŋʒädär: Some Exceptional Nominal Morphological Patterns

A few handfuls of Ŋʒädär nouns have exceptional morphological patterns going for them. There are three main classes of such patterns:

• -st'i-/-st'ı- added for plural and obviative forms.
• -rk'e-/-rk'o- added for all oblique cases and all plural and obviative forms.
• -t'o-/-t'e- added for plural oblique forms and obviative oblique forms

These three morphemes are all nominalizers; -st'(i/ı)- most often signifies '-ness, -ity'; thus for instance k'oru (dry) → k'orust'ı (dryness), sar (weak) → sarst'i (weakness), iqe (man) → iqest'i (manliness) but also occasionally other meanings: ibik (sleep) → ibix(s)t'i (bed), rügvä (house) → rügvästi (inhabitant). However, it also appears in the plural and obviative  forms of nouns such as mother (yajo), king (kamma), edible mushrooms (sändö), male offspring (gumu), female offspring (t'äne).

The -rk'(e|o)- suffix is used both for verbal nouns and for 'concrete examples' of an adjective, i.e. 'a red thing', or 'a kindness' (this use of -ness in English is somewhat different from the meaning of -ness in the previous paragraph). Many tools follow this pattern, but so do certain vessels, i.e. reindeer or dog sleds.

The -t'(o|e)- suffix often serves the role of turning a verb into an instance of the verb, i.e. q'olku = die, q'olxt'o = a death. However, this also occurs with some animal names, i.e. leading dog (hark) having the plural/obviative oblique stem harxt'o-, reindeer (iseti) having the plural/obviative oblique stem ist'e-).

More nouns of these type will find their way into the dictionary.

Ŋʒädär: Noun Morphology

Ŋʒädär nouns have case, proximative/obviativeness and number. In the obviative forms, number is omitted.

The cases of Ŋʒädär are the absolutive, the dative, the locative, the lative, the ablative, the genitive-comitative, the instrumental and the complement.

The absolutive takes no suffix. The dative singular takes -m/-im/-um/-üm/-ım. The locative takes -ŋa/-ŋä/-ŋe/-ŋo. The lative takes -lis/-lıs/-lus/-lüs. The ablative takes -line/-lınɤ/-lünä/-luno. The genitive-comitative takes -(h)Vs, where V is a reduplication of the last vowel of the stem. The instrumental takes -(r)Vk, with the same vowel reduplication as in the genitive. The complement is formed by the suffix -ɣuv/-jiy/-jüy/-ɣıv.

All cases except the dative (and absolutive) have very simple plurals - they are formed by inserting the morpheme -üv-/-uv-/-iy-/-ıɣ- after the stem. Some assimilation happens with the locative, giving -ümä/-uma/-inye/-uŋo.

The absolutive plural is formed by taking the full nominative, changing any word-final vowel to the most open vowel at the same position: u, o, a > a; i, e > e; ü, ö > ö; ı, ɤ > ɤ and affixing -r. If no word-final vowel exists, whichever of these four: {a, e, ö, ɤ} that fits the bill is inserted before -r.

The dative plural is exceptionally formed by a separate set of suffixes, viz. -ot'/-et'/-ät'/-ɤt'.

The obviative marker -qi(g)-/-qu(g)-/-qü(g)-/-qı(g)- takes the place of the number morpheme. The only case to have distinctive singular and plural forms in the oblique is the absolutive. The absolutive plural obviative turns the vowel into a widening diphthong with an -n for suffix, e.g. -qien, -quon, -qıɤn, -qüön. The dative also behaves exceptionally with the obviative marker: the suffixes are those of the dative plural and not of the dative singular.

The dative serves more roles than just that of a recipient; for several verbs, it marks the subject, and for some the object. It also marks purposes, causes, sources of information, the time at which something is to happen, by whose opinion something is or seems to be, or by whose perception something is known.

If a possessum would be in the absolutive case were it not possessed, the genitive marks both the possessor and the possessum. In other cases, the possessum retains the case it should be having. Who owns whom is determined by the animacy hierarchy. Reflexive possession of objects is also marked by marking the subject and object of the verb with the genitive case. In fact, whenever the possessum is a subject or an object, there is no need for the possessor to be part of the same noun phrase - it can be flung almost anywhere in the clause. The interactions between possessum, possessor, the animacy hierarchy, and verb argument structure is somewhat complicated. Normally, having a lower-ranked noun own a higher-ranked one is not trivial except when they're subject and object of a regular, transitive verb. A number of strategies exist for this, though.

The instrumental also marks manners, entire time-spans, and is generally used to form adverbs. Peculiarly, it also marks the location of verbs like 'live' or 'reside'.

The ablative marks beginnings of time-spans. Origins, and when talking about distances to things – distances are from a place in Ŋʒädär, not to a place. Distances between two places are from both of them.

Besides the obvious direction and destination, the lative marks ends of time-spans, as well as recurring times in plural forms.

The locative marks place as well as most mental states, with perfective transitive verbs it can also mark destination.

Detail #251: A Register, Taboo and Exceptional Noun Class

In a culture with some rather strict notions of whom it is fit to marry - i.e. probably more strict than 'don't marry close relatives', imagine if the language has a register whereby if you speak to an unmarried, young person whose family relations you are expected to be knowledgeable about, you are forced to use a register whereby anyone forbidden to this young person is in a special noun class.

(I also imagine the culture could have other, non-genetical things that determine permissibleness, for instance, astrological or other similar superstitions.)

After the young person has married, this register is no longer used with him or her. However, the congruence markers can still be used for a few specific meanings: acts of fornication and general violations of the sexual mores of the culture will always have that noun class's congruence marker on the verb. 

Here, the marker also is unique in being the only such marker to permit reduplication; when doing so, it is intensive and judgmental, essentially conveying something like 'you fucking idiot really had to fucking go and fuck your cousin did you?'

Finally, in some minority communities with other taboos as well - including more formalized food taboos - the same morpheme has come to mark violation of any of the other taboos, regardless of noun class of the object, or even with objectless actions that are forbidden.

Ŋʒädär: A Mood Marked by Word Order

Much like in English, the imperative is marked in Ŋʒädär by fronting the verb (and omitting any 2nd person subject). However, this imperative-like mood also serves certain other functions. In a subclause, it serves to mark the purpose for which something was done, e.g.

vär ehi luqu-nta-jut törö-ntä-z ehi p'arŋuba
you (s)he trick-fut-inv get-fut-direct (s)he  inheritance
(s)he will trick you so that (s)he will get the inheritance

This fronting is the sole circumstance in which the negation goes after the (main) verb. Auxiliaries need not be fronted, but if they are, they too follow the main verb. Another use of this mood is 'until' with the future form if the main clause has a present form or past form in it. 

ehi gäbü-lö-: mat'a-nta-: k'ugoru
he scream-past-intr leave-fut-intr bear
he screamed until the bear went away

mat'a-nta-: k'ugoru a ehi gäbü-lö-:
leave-fut-intr bear * he scream-past-intr

'a' serves as a subclause delimiter.

Challenge #1: My Own Solution?

In the very early days of this blog, I had this idea of posting challenges that people could come up with solutions for. I didn't get much response to them (although I had way fewer readers back then as well). However, in a moment of inspiration, I think I figured out a potential solution to Challenge #1.

Use some type of ingressive or imperfect aspect on the number; thus three-ingr-ptcpl = one that starts the count to three (where of course every 'counting' that this is the ingressive of is counting from the number one below, thus "the second").

Another way could of course be some causative-ingressive combination, three-caus-ingr-(ptcpl) or even three-ingr-caus-(ptcpl): the thing that starts to cause a count towards three, the thing that causes to start a count towards three.

It doesn't feel all that smooth, but it isn't all too stubbly either.

Detail #250: Partially Grammaticalized Subjects

Let's imagine a language that at some recent point has rearranged its noun classification. (Biological) Feminines have become distinct from other nouns, and now masculines and inanimates form the masculine gender.

The language has previously not had proper subjects, but is in the process of developing them. Specifically masculine animates are acquiring the status of being "proper subjects". Feminines, however, differ in having only some of the subject properties. (However, they acquire congruence marking on verbs to an even greater extent than animate masculines.) Inanimates trigger no verbal congruence anywhere.

As for congruence, this causes the following situation:

animate masculine agent present? → masculine congruence
feminine agent or patient or topic present? → feminine congruence (overrules masculine congruence)
inanimate masculine? → triggers no congruence

What syntactical things might we expect from these different levels of subjecthood? Let's look at some properties subjects often have. Let us start with reflexive binding. Masculines proper and feminines both have this subject property, but inanimates do not. Thus

She washes self/*her
He_animate washes self/*him
He_inanimate wash *self/it

 Neuters behave differently with regards to control, so you can't say things analogous to

the house seems to be on fire

it would require

seems that the house is on fire

but

he/she seems to be doing fine

 would be permitted. Another thing could be that feminines and masculines can be implied, covert arguments. For feminines, this would probably apply both for subjects and objects. A thing that is difficult to make sense of with English examples is resistance to extraction. Apparently, subjects are cross-linguistically less resistant, but in English, perversely, they are more resistant:

Evert thinks that Robert gave Lisa a gift
*who does Evert think that gave Lisa a gift
what does Evert think that Robert gave Lisa?
who does Evert think that Robert gave a gift to?

In this language, "who does Evert think that gave Lisa a gift" would be permissible, but not

*what does Evert think that Robert gave Lisa

or even

*what does Evert think that [gap] is the tastiest dish?

However,

who does Evert think gave Lisa a gift
who does Evert think received a gift from Robert

 would both be permissible, however not necessarily

?who does Evert think Lisa got a gift from
?who does Evert think Robert gave a gift to

More interesting things could be done with regards to subjecthood, but it's late in the evening and I think this post introduces enough ideas already.

Bringing Your Child up in a Conlang: Long-Term Commitment

A really stupid thing many American school districts apparently do, is to require that people stop speaking their native language with their children and switch to English instead. The mistaken thinking that goes into this probably includes something like

learning a language is great effort, so learning two languages doubles all learning efforts in all subjects

i.e. a kid who is learning maths needs to learn maths twice to master it in both languages. We do know this to be mistaken, and we even know now that bilinguals potentially do better than non-bilinguals. Maybe talking about the same things a bit in more than one language by random chance will resolve potential ambiguities?

It turns out that this common policy not only is mistaken, in the sense that it does not solve the problem it sets out to solve, but even worse, in that it often creates new problems. One of these is that bonding between parents and children can be impacted negatively if the language they use is replaced by another language.

Thus, if you decide to exclusively speak a conlang to your child - which basically is what you need to do if you want the child to learn it - you have to be ready to go in there for the really long run. 

Are you sure your love for your own hobby is that strong? Are you sure you're in for such a commitment? A child is a big enough commitment on itself, adding this to the equation seems rather heavy.