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===== Pronominal Affixes ===== | ===== Pronominal Affixes ===== | ||
The pronominal affixes present one of the greatest challenges to the students of the Minhast language due to their inherent complexity in structure and morphosyntax. These affixes are agreement markers for the core arguments, i.e. the Ergative and Absolutive arguments. In addition to marking the syntactic roles of the core arguments, gender, animacy, and number are also encoded by the pronominal affixes. These affixes, along with the role affixes, also serve to identify the verb as transitive or intransitive, and thus must agree with the appropriate Transitive affix (see below). For the transitive verb, the pronominal affixes present greater complexities than those of the intransitive verb - the transitive affixes, representing both the ergative and absolutive arguments of the clause, are portmanteau affixes; although some patterns can be discerned from this fusion of the segments representing the ergative and absolutive components, the transitive pronominal affixes are mostly irregular and have to be memorized individually. As expected, the affixes may change shape due to the sound changes created by adjacent morphemes. However, many of these sound changes deviate from the normal assimilation patterns described earlier in | The pronominal affixes present one of the greatest challenges to the students of the Minhast language due to their inherent complexity in structure and morphosyntax. These affixes are agreement markers for the core arguments, i.e. the Ergative and Absolutive arguments. In addition to marking the syntactic roles of the core arguments, gender, animacy, and number are also encoded by the pronominal affixes. These affixes, along with the role affixes, also serve to identify the verb as transitive or intransitive, and thus must agree with the appropriate Transitive affix (see below). For the transitive verb, the pronominal affixes present greater complexities than those of the intransitive verb - the transitive affixes, representing both the ergative and absolutive arguments of the clause, are portmanteau affixes; although some patterns can be discerned from this fusion of the segments representing the ergative and absolutive components, the transitive pronominal affixes are mostly irregular and have to be memorized individually. As expected, the affixes may change shape due to the sound changes created by adjacent morphemes. However, many of these sound changes deviate from the normal assimilation patterns described earlier in [[Minhast#Syllabic_Structure_and_Phonemic_Interactions|Phonology]]. | ||
Animacy marking is differentiated for the neuter genders only, as the masculine and feminine genders are inherently animate and thus require no special marking. Both the masculine and the feminine 3rd person plurals have merged into one common gender, while the gender for animate and inanimate neuter nouns are still distinguished. Remnants of a split ergativity can be found in the third person neuter animate singular, where the submorphememe of the portmenteau affix for the patient is derived from an earlier ''*-tir-'' Accusative form, as opposed to the expected form ''-mah-''. | Animacy marking is differentiated for the neuter genders only, as the masculine and feminine genders are inherently animate and thus require no special marking. Both the masculine and the feminine 3rd person plurals have merged into one common gender, while the gender for animate and inanimate neuter nouns are still distinguished. Remnants of a split ergativity can be found in the third person neuter animate singular, where the submorphememe of the portmenteau affix for the patient is derived from an earlier ''*-tir-'' Accusative form, as opposed to the expected form ''-mah-''. | ||