Suwáá/Morphology

This article covers High Sowaázh morphology.

There are five main parts of speech in Sowaázh:

• nouns
• determiners
• verbs
• clitics
• interjections

Nouns

Number

High Sowaázh has singular, dual and plural numbers. Outside of High and Classical Sowaázh, the dual is only found in some isolated dialects.

Grammatical number is not marked on nouns, rather verbs index the number of their argument nouns.

Possessive prefixes

Person	Singular	Dual	Plural
1	kha-	gyeé-	jhé-
2	mé-	je-	ólo-
3 (an.)	wa-	boñ-	da-
3 (inan.)	éñ-
Impersonal	'a'-

Relational nouns

Sowaázh uses relational nouns instead of adpositions.

• od 'in, at'
  • khod, mod, wod, yod, gyood, jod, booñd, jhod, olod, dod
• hash 'for'
• c'áakh 'next to, near'
  • páañgy wac'áakh 'next to the man'

Noun clitics

• ='áh: focus ("it is X that...")

Obligatory possession

Obligatory possession is used for family members.

Examples:

• 'mother': kheemáñ, méemáñ, weemáñ, gyeemán, jemáñ, boñmáñ, jheemáñ, óleemáñ, deemáñ, 'a'eemáñ
• 'father': khány, mány, wány, gyeény, jány, baány, jhány, ólany, dány, 'a'ány
• 'son': kha'ízh, mé'izh, wa'ízh, gyeé'izh, je'ízh, boñ'ízh, jhé'izh, ólo'ízh, da'ízh, 'a'ízh
• 'daughter': khájiil, méjiil, wájiil, gyeéjiil, jéjiil, bojiil, jhéjiil, ólojiil, dájiil, 'ájiil

Emphatic pronouns

• khabóoh 'I'
• mé'aj 'you (sg)'
• wojhá' 'he/she'
• jhée'i 'we'
• ólosdo 'you (pl)'
• bajaá' 'they'

Verbs

The number of the subject and object is indexed on the verb if the noun is animate.

Verb template

• mood/adverbial
• global directional/shape
• local directional
• personal affix
• inverse person marker
• STEM/(TAM & voice ablaut)
• causative
• reflexive/reciprocal
• TAM
• degree
• negative
• discourse marker/nominalizer

Adverbial preverbs

• shii-: again and again, one after another
• gladly
• unwillingly
• all of a sudden

Directional preverbs

Directionals fall into two types:

• Global directionals describe movement towards a final destination or describes a global shape.
• Local directionals describe movement from the speaker's point of view or from a small-scale perspective. These directionals are used especially for fluids and for individual behavior in groups of people or animals. Ex: "locally inwards", "locally outwards", "shearing", "with turbulent motion", "with some local movement opposite to the global direction", etc.

Some directional preverbs:

• lyo-: 'forming a line'

TAM inflection

For a complete list of High Sowaázh verbal ablaut paradigms, see Sowaázh/Ablaut classes.

A characteristic feature of Sowaázh verbs is stem ablaut in various TAM and voice forms. These paradigms tend to be quite complex. Most Sowaázh lects have a fixed (large) number of regular ablaut classes. The number of ablaut paradigms, and which verb stems fall into which ablaut classes, depends on the lect. High Sowaázh has 57 classes.

• Tenses: present, past
• Aspects: continuative, inceptive, conclusive, cessative, resumptive, iterative
• Moods: potential, necessitative, permissive, desiderative, imperative, optative
  • necessitative also means "it is logically necessary", permissive also means "it is possible that"

Example:

• I love you = lisjhógy
• I loved you = alisjhégy
• I will love you = lóosjheyáñ (li-óo-sjheyáñ)
• I fall in love with you (inceptive) = lisjhódagy

Personal affixes

Grammatical number is not marked on nouns, rather verbs index the number of their argument nouns.

Unipersonal

These prefixes are used with intransitive verbs or transitive verbs where the subject, or the object, or both are 3rd person.

Person	Singular	Dual	Plural
1	kha-	gyeé-	jhé-
2	mé-	je-	ólo-
3 (an.)	wa-	boñ-	be-
3 (inan.)	0-
Impersonal	'a'-

Bipersonal

These prefixes are used with transitive verbs only.

• li-: 2 > 1
• syi-: 1 > 2
• gi-: inverse marker for verbs with a third person; comes between the personal suffix and the stem. Usage follows the animacy hierarchy 2 > 3; 1 > 3; 3AN > 3INAN; PROX > OBV. By default the direction of the action is assumed to go down from the "more animate" constituent to the "less animate" one. The inverse marker is used when the action goes up the hierarchy.
  • Example: khasjhógy = I love him/her (the object is implied by the transitivity); khagisjhógy = s/he loves me

Voice

As Sowaázh morphosyntactic alignment is hierarchical alignment, verbs do not have a canonical voice. Instead there are detransitivizers and transitivizers.

Here are the morphological voices:

• transitivizer/"causative"
• detransitivizer/"passive"
• reciprocal

Discourse affixes

Sowaázh lects use discourse verbal affixes to reflect the speaker's attitude, degree of surprise, or other things; not using them may come across as clinical, stilted, or overly posh. High Sowaázh normally uses discourse affixes less often than do other Sowaázh lects, and uses "degree of surprise" affixes more frequently than attitudinal affixes. On average, female High Sowaázh speakers use attitudinal affixes more frequently than male speakers.

Poetic High Sowaázh may use archaic discourse affixes used in Classical Sowaázh.

Incorporation

Incorporation is no longer productive in High Sowaázh and is considered a poetic device.

Numerals

Numerals are really verbs: "one", "two", etc. are verbs meaning "to be one", "to be two", etc.

Numbers 1-10: kháñ, shjhed, yíiny, mól, shaáb, k'al, khash, 'oñt, pijh, sóoñh (change some of these numbers)

Derivational morphology

Sanskrit-style compounds in poetry? (mainly dvandvas and bahuvrihis)