Peshpeg: Difference between revisions
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Peshpeg nouns fall into three declensions, or classes, simply called Class I, Class II, and Class III. The noun classes roughly coincide with natural gender and/or animacy. | Peshpeg nouns fall into three declensions, or classes, simply called Class I, Class II, and Class III. The noun classes roughly coincide with natural gender and/or animacy. | ||
Class I nouns, | *Class I nouns, | ||
#Preserve the original nominative-accusative system. | |||
Class II nouns | #Typically are male humans, or consist of nouns that are associated with male attributes, particularly weapons. Divinities, supernatural events, wolves, horses, and moving bodies of water also fall within this class. | ||
*Class II nouns | |||
#Morphosyntactically take ergative-absolutive pattern: they take the ergative ''-du/-dumu'' markers, the ''-d-'' submorpheme etymologically derived from the Minhast ergative clitic ''=de''. | |||
#Follow along biological gender for female humans, and neuter animate count nouns, animals, except reptiles, amphibians, and fish. Some inanimate nouns are also found in this category, such as trees, household items e.g. ''tonkul'' "crockpot", or farming implements, e.g. ''vulpat'' "hoe". | |||
#These nouns are lower in the animacy hierarchy than the Class I nouns. | |||
*Class III nouns | |||
#Occupy the lowest level in the animacy hierarchy | |||
#Take no marking for case or number. | |||
#Nouns falling in this class include certain body parts, non-mammalian/non-avian animals, most plants, mass nouns, inanimate objects, and abstract nouns. | |||
====Case and Number==== | ====Case and Number==== |