Friday, June 24, 2016

Adjectival Congruence in Sargaĺk

In Sargaĺk, there is a very limited case congruence: an NP-initial adjective or determiner takes a case-specific congruence marker. However, the congruence is not entirely trivial:
  • The familiar comitative does not have congruence morphology of its own, but uses regular comitative morphology on adjectives.
  • Both masculine and feminine singular nominatives have a zero congruence marker on adjectives. Demonstratives distinguish the two, however, as do a few other quantifiers and determiners.
  • The ablative's adjectival congruence marker is identical to the regular oblique marker in the singular.
  • For non-nominative NPs, any intervening adjective takes an oblique, gender-specific morpheme.
The cause for this system seems to be providing cues as early as possible for parsing. 

Now it's time for some example phrases:
p'ĺxo : pig, swine (m)
kor p'ĺxo : big swine
žaŋ-a p'ĺxo :
that swine

kor-ta p'əlx-ta : big swine (pegative)
žaŋ-ta (kor-ə) p'əlxta : that big swine
goŋ-ta (kor-ə) p'əlxta : dumb (big) swine (pegative)
kor-sa p'ĺx-a : dumb swines
goŋ-sa kor-eg p'ĺx-a : dumb swines (pegative)
goŋ-eg p'əlx-tsa : from the dumb swine
kor-eg goŋ-eg p'əlx-tsa: from the big dumb swine
goŋ-əssa p'ĺx-əssa : from the dumb swines


č'onku : bottle
kor č'onku : big bottle
kor-air č'onk-air
: big bottles
kor-sta č'onk-sta : big bottles (peg)
k'ilp č'onku : full bottle
k'il-tat č'on-tat : full bottle (pegative)
žaŋ-u k'ilp č'onku : this full bottle
žaŋ-tat k'ilp-i č'on-tat : this full bottle (pegative)
žaŋ-rut k'ilp-i č'onk-rut : in this full bottle
ža-rne k'ilp-i č'onk-ərne : into this full bottle
žaŋ-el k'ilp-el č'on-əssa : from these full bottles
As can be seen, the oblique masculine marker is -ə, the oblique feminine is -i. In the plural, they are -eg (masc) and -el (fem).

For complements of verbs, the oblique markers are used if the state expressed is fairly constant, i.e. 'he is tall' or the like, whereas if it is more temporary, no congruence marker is used.

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