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Meskangela: Difference between revisions
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Later dialects generally follow the model above, modifying some individual elements, such as adding more permissible clusters, or merging the clusters into single consonants, thus retaining all the elements only nominally. This is especially true for the Southern dialects, most of which became fairly analytic and lost most of their suffixes and prefixes in the process, as well as tone and contrastive vowel length. | Later dialects generally follow the model above, modifying some individual elements, such as adding more permissible clusters, or merging the clusters into single consonants, thus retaining all the elements only nominally. This is especially true for the Southern dialects, most of which became fairly analytic and lost most of their suffixes and prefixes in the process, as well as tone and contrastive vowel length. | ||
==Grammar== | ==Grammar== | ||
In this subsection only the grammar of Classical Meskangela is discussed, considering the amount of variation among different dialect groups and uncertainty of the Old Meskangela morphological structure. Classical Meskangela as well as most of its dialects are [[w:Agglutinative language|agglutinative]], | In this subsection only the grammar of Classical Meskangela is discussed, considering the amount of variation among different dialect groups and uncertainty of the Old Meskangela morphological structure. Classical Meskangela as well as most of its dialects are [[w:Agglutinative language|agglutinative]] or weakly [[w:Fusional language|fusional]], the individual morphological elements are not easily segmentable, due in large part to the presence of [[w:Portmanteau|portmanteaux]] morphemes and [[w:Allomorph|allomorphy]]. | ||
Although attempts have been made to reconstruct a quasi-regular “ablaut” system for Proto-Meskangela, the vowel gradation in the Classical Meskangela variety is sporadic and irregular, especially in case of open-syllable roots. Some verb conjugational pattern may be attributed to the Proto-Meskangela affixes that later merged with the verb stem, such as the "a-ö" alternation, which often shows up in the derivational morphology of Meskangela. Pairs, such as, ''khitan'' “to rub” and ''khutan'' “to scratch”, ''rum'' “darkness” and ''rim'' “evening” are relatively common with back vowels often representing a more "internalised" process or abstract phenomenon, than their front counterparts which are more concrete and "external". Certain prefixes have active and passive counterparts, such as ''si-'' (active transitive) and ''su-'' (mediopassive): ''sinnaŋan'' “to read (something)” and ''sunnaŋan'' “to read (in general)/ to be read” (hence Western ''sunnaŋ'' “book”, but Eastern ''abirai'' from ''bërëjan'' “to write”). | Although attempts have been made to reconstruct a quasi-regular “ablaut” system for Proto-Meskangela, the vowel gradation in the Classical Meskangela variety is sporadic and irregular, especially in case of open-syllable roots. Some verb conjugational pattern may be attributed to the Proto-Meskangela affixes that later merged with the verb stem, such as the "a-ö" alternation, which often shows up in the derivational morphology of Meskangela. Pairs, such as, ''khitan'' “to rub” and ''khutan'' “to scratch”, ''rum'' “darkness” and ''rim'' “evening” are relatively common with back vowels often representing a more "internalised" process or abstract phenomenon, than their front counterparts which are more concrete and "external". Certain prefixes have active and passive counterparts, such as ''si-'' (active transitive) and ''su-'' (mediopassive): ''sinnaŋan'' “to read (something)” and ''sunnaŋan'' “to read (in general)/ to be read” (hence Western ''sunnaŋ'' “book”, but Eastern ''abirai'' from ''bërëjan'' “to write”). | ||