Tigol/Proto-Tigol

Tigol/Proto-Tigol gávthȁ themsármā
Type
Fusional
Alignment
Nominative-accusative
Head direction
Initial	Mixed		Final
Primary word order
Verb-subject-object
Tonal
Yes
Declensions
Yes
Conjugations
Yes
Genders
2
Nouns decline according to...
Case		Number
Definiteness		Gender
Verbs conjugate according to...
Voice		Mood
Person		Number
Tense		Aspect

Background

The Themsaran language constitutes a separate branch of the Zachydic language family, along with other para-Themsaran languages. Themsaran is a typological and lexical outlier in its family due to its long period of isolation and substrate influence. The language possesses strongly head-initial syntax, head-marking in both clauses and possessive NPs, mixed fusional and agglutinative inflection, and nominative-accusative morphosyntax. This article describes Classical Themsaran.

Phonology

Consonants

	Bilabial	Labio-dental	Dental	Alveolar	Post-alveolar	Palatal	Dorsal	Radical	Glottal
Nasal	m		n				ŋ
Plosive	p b			t d			k g	(ʡ)	(ʔ)
Fricative		f v	θ ⟨th⟩	s z	ʃ ⟨š⟩ ʒ ⟨ž⟩		x~χ ⟨ch⟩	ħ~ʜ~ʢ ⟨ħ⟩	h~ɦ ⟨h⟩
Affricate					tʃ ⟨ť⟩
Approximant		(ʋ)				j
Trill				r
Lateral app.				l		ʎ ⟨ļ⟩

[ʔ] may occur only in morpheme boundaries.

Conditioned allophony

Phoneme	Allophone	Condition(s)
/ħ/	[ħ~ʜ]	#_, C[+voiceless]_
	[ʡ~ʢ]	V_V, C[+voiced]_
/h/	[ɦ]	V_V, C[+voiced]_
C[+obstruent, ±voiced]	C[+obstruent, ∓voiced]	_C[+obstruent, -guttural, ∓voiced]

Vowels

Themaran has six vowels, short and long. Short vowels have one mora, and long vowels have two morae.

	Front	Central	Back
Close	i ⟨i⟩ iː ⟨ī⟩	ʉ ⟨y⟩ ʉː ⟨ȳ⟩	u ⟨u⟩ uː ⟨ū⟩
Mid	e ⟨e⟩ eː ⟨ē⟩		o ⟨o⟩ oː ⟨ō⟩
Open		a ⟨a⟩ aː ⟨ā⟩

The following are the diphthongs, all falling: /ai au ei ie~ia uo~ua/ ⟨ai au ei ie ua⟩. All diphthongs are bimoraic.

Pitch accent

Pitch accent, or tone, is phonemic in Themsaran. The following is the notation for tones:

	Short	Long	Diphthong
Unmarked	a	ā	ai
High	á	a̋	ái
Low	à	ȁ	ài
Falling	-	â	âi
Rising	-	ǎ	ǎi

The pitch accent of a word (of more than one mora) consists of two components: the lexical tone, and the position of the downstep (the latter is confined to appear after the 3rd-to-last mora). A high-tone word is consistently high until the downstep, whereafter the pitch drops sharply. A low-tone word starts low and has the highest pitch at the tonic mora, which is immediately before the downstep.

The following are the rules governing the marking Themsaran pitch accent:

1. High lexical tone is marked in the initial syllable; low tone is not marked, unless necessitated by rule 2.
2. The tonic syllable is always marked:
   1. If the downstep occurs after a long syllable (syllable with a long vowel or diphthong), the syllable is rising in a low-tone word, and high in a high-tone word.
   2. If the downstep occurs between the two morae of a long syllable, the syllable has falling tone.
3. If the first syllable has high tone and precedes a downstep, the second syllable is marked as low.

If the downstep occurred word-finally, the first syllable of a following high tone word would have slightly lower pitch. In pausa, a word final high short syllable is realized as a falling, short vowel.

Grammar

NB.' In structural glosses, a, b, c... are coreference indices, and i, j, k... are agreement indices.

Nouns

Nouns inflect for number, definiteness and possessedness, but not for case. Nouns have two genders, masculine and feminine. In third-person possessed forms, Themsaran makes a distinction between the absolute possessed form, which indicates a noun possessed by a pronoun, and the conjunct possessed form, used to indicate a possessive relationship between two nouns and agreeing with the gender of the possessor.

First declension

The first declension consists primarily of masculine nouns.

First declension

	Singular				Plural
	Indefinite		Definite		Indefinite		Definite
Unpossessed
1sg
2sg.m
2sg.f
3sg.m
3sg.f
4sg.m
4sg.f
1ex
1in
2pl.m
2pl.f
3pl.m
3pl.f
4pl.m
4pl.f

Second declension

The second declension, consisting of vowel-final nouns, consists primarily of feminine nouns.

Second declension

	Singular				Plural
	Indefinite		Definite		Indefinite		Definite
Unpossessed
1sg
2sg.m
2sg.f
3sg.m
3sg.f
4sg.m
4sg.f
1ex
1in
2pl.m
2pl.f
3pl.m
3pl.f
4pl.m
4pl.f

Third declension

The third declension consists mainly of mass, collective and abstract nouns of both genders.

Third declension

	Singular				Plural
	Indefinite		Definite		Indefinite		Definite
Unpossessed
1sg
2sg.m
2sg.f
3sg.m
3sg.f
4sg.m
4sg.f
1ex
1in
2pl.m
2pl.f
3pl.m
3pl.f
4pl.m
4pl.f

Tonal patterns of nominals

Every noun falls under one of three tonal paradigms.

Adjectives

Adjectives agree in not only number, definiteness and gender with their heads, but also in possessedness. Adjectives also take degree inflection (positive, "less/least", "more/most", elative, "X enough", "too X"). Adjectives exhibit tonal ablaut like those of nouns.

Degree

Adjectives with degree inflections may be nominalized to derive, for example, meanings such as "supreme strength" from "the very strongest".

Pronouns

Personal

Personal pronouns

	Singular	Plural
1.ex	na̋	châm
1.in		táŋên
2.m	zéi	srâs
2.f	véi	srâth
3.m	žá	žû
3.f	žî	žân
4.m	ťá	ťû
4.f	ťî	ťân

Demonstrative

The demonstratives have identical endings to personal pronouns in feminine singular and the plural. The adnominal demonstratives are mé (near speaker), ħé (near hearer), and ťá (distal; identical to 4th person pronoun), and the pronominal demonstratives are imé, iħá, and iťá.

Reciprocal

The reciprocal pronoun, "each other", is nadnék. It originated from an adverb that was later reanalyzed as a pronoun.

Verbs

Finite verbs are marked for TAM, degree (positive, "more/most"), voice (active and mediopassive), the subject's person, number, and gender and, if the direct object is definite, is obligatorily marked with the (usually direct) object's person, number, and gender in most TAMs, except in the imperative. The verb may agree with an indirect object (which is typically animate) instead of with the direct object. Verbs also have several non-finite forms, used with various subordinating conjunctions and relative clauses.

Tense-aspect-mood

Imperative

The imperative is used to issue positive, direct orders.

Jussive

The jussive bears a wide range of uses:

• optatives (wishes) and hortatives (urging);
• prohibitions, with the prohibitive marker;
• imperatives in indirect speech, with a complementizer;
• purpose clauses, as relative clauses or as subordinated or coordinated clauses.

Conjugation of the active

The active voice is the default voice, used when the subject is the agent of the verb.

The three conjugations of Themsaran verbs are demonstrated below respectively with the verbs mól - 'thank', chrīgá - 'walk backwards', ga̋le - 'sing'. The first conjugation subsumes ħ-stem verbs, where the ħ assimilates into any consonant that begins an ending, and h-stem verbs, for which only fricative-beginning endings are so geminated, and for other consonants, undergoes compensatory lengthening of the vowel preceding the ending.

Subject affixes

Imperative

	Singular	Plural
1.in	-	mólèns! chrǐgans! ga̋lêns!
2.m	mól! chrǐga! ga̋le!	mólèls! chrǐgals! ga̋lêls!
2.f	mólt! chrǐgat! ga̋lét!	mólèrs! chrǐgars! ga̋lêrs!

Present

	Singular	Plural
1.ex	mólȉ chrǐgai ga̋lei	mólmà chrǐgama ga̋lêma
1.in		mólènse chrǐganse ga̋lênse
2.m	mólèr chrǐgar ga̋lêr	mólèlse chrǐgalse ga̋lêlse
2.f	mólȅ chrǐgā ga̋lîe	mólèrse chrǐgarse ga̋lêrse
3.m	mólè chrǐgà ga̋lê	mólvì chrǐgavi ga̋lévi
3.f	mólìs chrǐgàis ga̋lìes	móltì chrǐgati ga̋léti

Jussive

	Singular	Plural
1.ex
1.in
2.m
2.f
3.m
3.f

Non-finite forms

The non-finite forms are participles and two infinitives.

The participle is formed by infixing ⟨an⟩ before the nucleus of the first syllable of the stem.

The first infinitive is formed by suffixing -s to the 2nd person masculine singular imperative.

Conjugation of the mediopassive

The mediopassive marks the subject as a patient of the verb. Apart from passivity, mediopassives may have a derivational function; they may indicate reflexive action or change of state. As such there are quite a few deponent verbs, verbs that are inherently mediopassive, and also mediopassive counterparts of active intransitive verbs.

Subject affixes

Imperative

	Singular	Plural
1.in
2.m			2.f

Present

	Singular	Plural
1.ex
1.in
2.m
2.f
3.m
3.f

Jussive

	Singular	Plural
1.ex
1.in
2.m
2.f
3.m
3.f

Object affixes

The object affixes combine at the end of the verb, sometimes in less predictable ways, to agree with the direct object.

Object affixes

1sg	2sg.m	2sg.f	3sg.m	3sg.f	4sg.m	4sg.f	1ex	1in	2pl.m	2pl.f	3pl.m	3pl.f	4pl.m	4pl.f
-(e)n	-ze	-ve	-(j)u	-(j)i	-thu	-thi	-am	-(e)nt	-sŋa	-sŋe	-(e)ch	-(e)r	-thech	-ther

Numerals

	Cardinal	Ordinal	Multiple	Distributive	Fractional

Syntax

The default constituent order is verb-subject-pronominal oblique object-direct object. The subject or the direct object can be topicalized or focalized by being placed in front of the verb.

Noun phrases

Numerals precede nouns; possessors follow their possessa; demonstratives occur after attributive adjectives, which follow nouns. Whether a quantifier precedes or follows the noun depends on the specific quantifier. Within these boundaries there is a lot of leeway; an attributive adjective or a demonstrative can occupy any position between its head and the relative clause.

Distributive possession

To express the meaning of "our/your/their respective NP", the last noun of the NP is reduplicated in absolute possessed forms. The plural persons are decomposed as follows:

• 1ex.m: noun-1sg›sg noun-3sg.m›sg or noun-3sg.m›sg noun-1sg›sg
• 1ex.f: noun-1sg›sg noun-3sg.f›sg or noun-3sg.f›sg noun-1sg›sg
• 1in.m: noun-2sg.m›sg noun-1sg›sg or noun-1sg›sg noun-2sg.m›sg
• 1in.f: noun-2sg.f›sg noun-1sg›sg or noun-1sg›sg noun-2sg.f›sg
• 2pl.m: noun-2sg.m›sg noun-2sg.m›sg
• 2pl.f: noun-2sg.f›sg noun-2sg.f›sg
• 3pl.m: noun-3sg.m›sg noun-3sg.m›sg
• 3pl.f: noun-3sg.f›sg noun-3sg.f›sg
• 4pl.m: noun-4sg.m›sg noun-4sg.m›sg
• 4pl.f: noun-4sg.f›sg noun-4sg.f›sg

These exact forms are always used disregarding the finer aspects of gender composition in the group. Thus, for example, if the only male in a group speaks of "our (exclusive) respective villages", he will still say "my village his village".

Equational sentences

The copula vák is rarely used in the present tense. Instead, a 3rd- or a 4th-person pronoun (cliticized and therefore toneless) agreeing with the subject may be used anywhere in the sentence, or omitted. Both subject-predicate and predicate-subject orders may be found. The predicate-subject order tends to indicate a more permanent state of being, while the subject-predicate order denotes a more temporary state. When the subject is a pronoun, the uncliticized pronoun is used.

Coreferentiality

There are several situations where the strictly head-marking language tracks coreferentiality, or which agreeing noun a verb or pronoun taking a given agreement refers to, with fourth person pronouns or by other means.

Content questions

The fourth person object suffix is used on the verb, not the third person, when the interrogative word is the direct object.

Jé henesanú?
/jéꜜ hènesanuꜜ/
jé ⟨he⟩nesa⟨n⟩-u
who ⟨PAST.PERF⟩kill.animate.subject⟨PAST.PERF.3SG.M.NOM⟩-3SG.M.OBJ
Who killed him?

Jé henesanthú?
/jéꜜ hènesanθuꜜ/
jé ⟨he⟩nesa⟨n⟩-thu
who ⟨PAST.PERF⟩kill.animate.subject⟨PAST.PERF.3SG.M.NOM⟩-4SG.M.OBJ
Whom did he kill?/Who is it he killed?

Possessives

If an absolute possessed noun has a possessor who is the subject of the clause it is in, the third person is used. All other possessors of the same gender and number are in the fourth person.

Relative clauses

Any pronoun which corefers with the head of the relative clause is in the fourth person. The non-resumptive third-person pronouns are all ordinary third person.

Indirect speech

If the complement clause's subject corefers with the subject of the main clause, it is left unstated in the complement clause. Otherwise the third- or fourth-person pronoun is used as the subject as appropriate.

"Impersonal" sentences

There exists impersonal pronouns (identical to the interrogative "who"/"what", and distinguished by not being fronted), but it is only used as an intransitive subject. In other cases, the verb is put into the mediopassive (or mediopassive of causative or applicative, as appropriate).