Minhast: Difference between revisions

|familycolor  = panlaffic

|fam1          = Nahenic

|nation        = Minhastim Karak

|scripts        = * [[wikipedia:Abugida|Native Abugida (Širkattarnaft)]]

The language is divided into two major branches, Upper Minhast and Lower Minhast, each of which is divided into several smaller dialects, such as the Salmon Speaker variant of the Upper Minhast dialect, and the Osprey Speaker variant of the Lower Minhast dialect.  The subject of Minhast dialectology has sparked much research and controversy; more details on the research of dialectology may be found in [[Minhast/Dialectology|Minhast Dialectology]]

For these reasons, Minhast had long been classified as a language isolate.  However, in a breakthrough study by Ming Wei and Jaeng Tae-Moon at the Department of Linguistics in Beijing Imperial University discovered shared features between Minhast, the Northwest Pacific language [[Nankôre]], and the Native American language [[Nahónda]], the latter two languages also having been classified as language isolates.  These languages have thus been grouped together into a language family called Nahenic, from the reconstructed form ''*nāhen'', meaning "people". Fossilized verbalizer morphemes affixed to body parts, the relatively intact preservation of the form of the Causative affix and its relative position in each language's verbal template, and cognate sets and sound change correspondences demonstrated these far-flung languages as having a common ancestry.  A major impediment to discovering Minhast's relationship to other languages was hampered by the paucity of literature on Nankôre; it was through the extensive documentation of this language by Brian Mills, from the Department of Indian Anthropology and Linguistics at the University of North Carolina that provided the material needed to link Minhast with Nankôre and Nahónda. Dialectal analysis conducted by Napayshni Tashunka of the University of the Lakota Nation has further contributed to the reconstruction of the Nahenic language family, particularly with data gathered from the Stone Speaker dialect, a divergent dialect which he argues should be classified as a separate language under a larger grouping, the Minhastic branch.

=== Phonemic Inventory ===

<div style="text-align: center;">

The phonemes /q/ and /χ/ are found only in the Seal and Wolf Speaker dialects. These phonemes occur in only a handful of words; their origin is unknown, although an Eskimoan-Aleutian language, most likely from Central Siberian Yup'ik source, has been proposed.  The Wolf Speakers acquired these phonemes from contact with the Seal Speakers, and they are found almost exclusively in words of Seal Speaker origin, although some of these phonemes have seeped into words originally of Salmonic origin, e.g. /qaraq/ instead of expected Salmonic /karak/, particularly in the Wolf Speaker northwestern and western regions adjoining Seal Speaker Country.

The phoneme /f/ is a minor phoneme in non-Stone Speaker dialects and never occurs word-initially.  Its occurrence is most noticeable in the nominalizer ''=naft'', although in some dialects, particularly the Lower Minhast dialects, [ħ] has started replacing /f/.  In the Gull Speaker dialect, it is /x/ that has replaced /f/ in its entire lexicon, including in the nominalizer ''=naft'', now realized as ''=naxt''.  The Stone Speaker dialect, however, has preserved /f/, allowing it even in word-inital position; moreover, it occurs in high frequency, perhaps as a result of influence from a substratum language.

The phone /ħ/ is a minor phoneme in the Upper Minhast dialects, occurring most often in the Horse Speaker dialect, although it too occurs in the Salmonic dialects, albeit in smaller frequencies.  In the Horse Speaker dialect, /ħ/ preceded by a vowel causes the vowel to lengthen, whereas no such lengthening occurs in the few Salmonic words the phoneme exists.  The Salmonic dialects allow /ħ/ in initial position, as in the noun /'ħan:u/, a hawk endemic to northeastern Minhay.  Between the Salmonic and Stone Speaker dialects, initial /ħ/ consistently occurs in Salmonic words with Stone Speaker cognates starting with an initial /f/.

{{Minhast_Vowels_IPA}}

<li>Minhast has a strong tendency to form intermedial clusters, providing that Rules #1-#3 are observed. If necessary, an epenthetic vowel may be added before or after the syllable to create these syllabic patterns, e.g. ''uš<span style="text-decoration:underline;color:blue;font-weight:bold">u</span>ntahu'' "You hit it." vs. ''ušnu'' "He hit it." (from the verb root ''ušn-'' "to hit").</li>  

{{Minhast_Phonotactics_Template}}

</li>

</li>

{| class="bluetable lightbluebg mw-collapsible mw-collapsible"

! Initial Pattern

! Final Contraction

==== Hanzi and Hangul Scripts ====

==== Ammerkast Script ====

! Type I

|gāl

|

-gal-

|horse

|-  

! rowspan="3"| Type II  

|marua

|

-mar-

|-  

|yarea

|  

-yar-

|-

|simmia

|

-simm-

|-

!  3rd Feminine Sg.

|-

!  3rd Neuter Animate Sg.

|-

!  Distal

|  far from both speaker and listener

|-

!  Invisible

| n/a

|}

|-

! style="text-align:left"|  3rd Feminine Sg.

|-

! style="text-align:left"|  3rd Neuter Animate Sg.

| eyhaš

| tāraš

|-

! style="text-align:left"|  3rd Neuter Inanimate Sg.

|-  style=""

! style="" | half

|-  style="" style=""

!  style="" | third

== Verbs ==

Interrogative verbs are an unusual feature of the Minhast verbal system, and are rare cross-linguistically but may be found in other languages such as Takic, a North American language from the Uto-Aztecan family.  In many languages, certain interrogative words co-occur with certain verbs with high frequency.  Using English as an example, the verbs in the questions "What happened?", "Where are you going?", "Why did you do it?" illustrate that certain verbs, when they take a WH-word as an argument, have a statistically higher probability of picking one or two WH-words above others.  In Minhast, the Interrogative Verbs serve as a shortcut, precluding the need for constructing a whole interrogative sentence with at least two constituents, the WH-word and the verb it is serving as an argument to.

Where person-number marking is allowed, both second and third person singular/plural marking predominate; first person marking is infrequent.  Many of these verbs appear to have a default tense, usually in the past but sometimes in the future, even though the verb has no explicit tense marking, e.g. ''maymaštahaš'' seems to have a default past tense even though the past tense affix ''-ar-'' does not appear; however if the past tense affix appears, the verb remains well-formed.  Present tense meaning, if intended, is usually recoverable from context or discourse.

| ta- <br/> ta'- <br/> t- <br/>tara-, tarra-, tabbina-

| no, not <br/><br/><br/>never, never again; not at all

|-

! Contradictory

==== Preverb 3 Mood-Aspect-Manner Affixes ====

Unlike other verb slots, where the affixes are strictly ordered in relation to each other, the affixes in the Preverb 3 slot exhibit free order, or to be more precise, they are scope-ordered. Within this slot, a given affix exhibits scope over the element immediately to its right. With few exceptions, several affixes may occur simultaneously, limited only by whether the combination "makes sense", i.e. the resulting semantic meaning is felicitous.

   

{| class="bluetable lightbluebg sortable mw-collapsible"

! Expective

| -naš-

|  

|-

# As this verb form creates a transitive clause, the Controller becomes the ergative argument and the Controllee becomes the absolutive argument.

# The ''-sassi-'' allomorph surfaces when immediately followed by an affix starting with /s, ʃ/, as in the Causative ''-šp-'' affix, e.g. ''Sassišpikallutekarūš'' "I wanted to make him eat" (i.e. I wanted to feed him), or with affixes that start with a consonant cluster such as the Cessative ''-kš-'', e.g. ''Sassikšikallutekarūš'' "I wanted him to stop eating".

|-

!  Aversive

!Inchoative

| -saxt- <br/> -sax-

|-

!Simulative

| to resemble  

|-

! rowspan="3"| Qualitatives

|-

!Completive

| to finish

| Indicates completion

The Inverse Volitional affix interacts with the semantics of the verb root.  If a verb root semantically implies the Agent has no control over an event, or the event is by happenstance and not by deliberate intent, the Inverse Volitional derives a verb that implies the Agent has control of an event or is actively seeking to determine its outcome.  As an illustration, the verb root ''-sar-'' (to see) implies happenstance, where as the addition of the Inverse Volitional affix, yielding the form ''kaħsaran'' < ''-kah-sar-'' changes the meaning to "to look at" or even "to stare at".  In contrast, the verb root ''-misk-'' (to be ill) semantically implies lack of control.  Adding the Inverse Volitional Affix plus the Reflexive-Benefactive ''-sakšar-'' to yield the form ''kaħmisiksakšaran'' < ''-kah-misk-sakšar'' changes the meaning to "to deliberately infect oneself in order to play hooky".

{| class="bluetable lightbluebg"

==== Preverb 5 Applicative Affixes ====

Although the Applicative Affixes encode spatial or directional information like the Oblique case clitics, they do not resemble them in form.  The location and tight binding of these affixes belie their origins as the remnants of incorporated nouns from Proto-Nahenic; supporting evidence of this comes from the existence of independent cognate nouns in Nankôre, such as ''rahko'' "gift", ''macihi'' "hand", and ''nahko'' "room, enclosure", which is also cognate with the Minhast locative interrogative ''nakkī'' "where".

! Case Role

! Affix

|-

! Dative

|-

! Benefactive

| -rak-

|-

! Instrumental

| -mat-

|-

! Locative

|-

! style="text-align:left"|  3rd Feminine Sg.

|-

! style="text-align:left"|  3rd Neuter Animate Sg.

{{Gloss

|IPA =  

| gloss = morning CONN=INCEP-cry-DISTR-3SF-IMPF-TRANS

| translation = She started crying earlier this morning and hasn't stopped since (lit. This morning she begins crying still)

{{Gloss

|IPA =  

| gloss = morning CONN=INCEP-ITER-cry-DISTR-3SF-IMPF-TRANS

| translation = She has been crying on and off since this morning and hasn't stopped (lit. This morning she begins to continue to cry on and off and is still crying)

===== Participial =====

{| class="bluetable lightbluebg"

The Participial also creates deverbals, which nominalizes a verb stem.  This nominalization in turn may be incorporated into a  matrix verb.  Five requirements must be satisfied before the nominalization can be incorporated:

#All ''wa=''-binding is stripped from the nominalization;

#The affixes from the Transitivity and Terminals slots are stripped from the nominalization;

#The pronominal affixes are stripped and the nominalization inherits its polypersonal referencing from its matrix verb;

!  Transitivizer

|  -u- <br/> <br>-ū- <br/> -un-

|-

!  Antipassive

! rowspan="9" |Evidentials

! Factive

| Referred to as the Gnomic, Aorist, and Neutral in other comparative linguistics material, the term Factive is used due to the influence of Iroquoian linguistic literature, since early treatises of Minhast were conducted by experts in the Iroquoian languages, who noticed structural and typological similarities between the two otherwise different language groups.

|-

|  Indicates the speaker is determined that the state or event shall be fulfilled; if accompanied by a negator, it conveys the meaning "never". The "-warāš-/-waraš-" forms occur when preceded by the Transitivizer ''-u''; in the Upper Minhast dialects, excluding the Seal and Elk Speaker dialects, the underlying ''n''-form of the Transitivizer surfaces, e.g. ''Ušneknesunwaraš'' ("I will definitely hit him!")

|-

|-

! Proximal

! Invisible

| -hurtāhā

|-

! colspan="2" | Emphatic Imperative

! Purposive

| -nimmā <br/>-pannamā-<br/>-pannamāš-

|-

! Quotative

*Instrument: Verb root + ''-sesp'' (from ''sepsir'' "hand"), e.g. ''kirismesp'' (lit. "speak-hand", i.e. "phone, cellular")

*Manner: Verb root + ''-tak'' (from "style; way of doing something), e.g. ''kirimtak/kirintak'' (lit. "speak-way", i.e. "presentation", as in a business presentation/proposal; "delivery, oratory style")

=== Gender-number Differentiation ===

Gender-number differentiation, the assignment of different grammatical genders and/or number to a lexical root, is exploited frequently to derive collective and mass nouns, and their corresponding count forms.  Typically, a lexically collective or mass noun is assigned as a neuter inanimate singular noun, whilst their singulative forms are assigned to either to the third person masculine singular form, or the third person '''plural''' feminine form.  The pluralization of the singulative forms usually involves assigning them to the neuter animate singular form.

===Reduplication===

*''nurruran'' (to pour) < ''nurran'' (to spill)

*The Gerundial ''-x-'' is becoming more frequently used, particularly for forming technological terminology.

A few non-productive derivational suffixes occur occasionally in the standard language, with increasing frequency in the Upper Minhast dialects.  These affixes are considered fossilized, but Classical Minhast texts indicate they could be generated spontaneously.  The most common ones found in the standard language are:

* ''-(u)mbāt'': found mostly in collective nouns, and some abstract nouns.  These nouns come from  Salmonic dialects and Classical Minhast sources;

* ''-ummāt, -mmāt'': also found mostly in collective nouns, and some abstract nouns.  These nouns come from Horse Speaker sources and are cognate with Salmonic ''-(u)mbāt'';

* ''-pnis'': habitual activities; words containing this suffix indicate Upper Minhast origins;

* ''-niwak'': habitual activities that occur daily; sometimes indicates a profession.  Most noticeable in the term ''hupniwak'', tools associated with carrying out daily functions, e.g. a flint stone for lighting fire (this term has also become a derogatory term for the City Speakers, since they serve as "tools" for administering domestic policy);

* ''-uyyi''/''-ūy'': found mostly in abstract and some place nouns.  Derived respectively from Horse Speaker and Salmon Speaker sources, words containing these fossilized suffixes have not been adopted in great numbers into Modern Standard Minhast due to speakers from other dialects having pronunciation difficulties with the ''uy(yi)'' sequence.

<!--

The spatial class also has an Interjective form, usually best translated as "Here ''x'' is/are!", "There ''x'' is/are!"  The forms that are bound by the ''wa='' Connective always require a clause to bind to.  In contrast, the Interjective forms must immediately precede standalone NPs, thus they are not bound by the ''wa='' Connective and cannot be followed by or embedded within a clause.   

{| class="bluetable lightbluebg"

|  

# runa  

| runa wa=

| warruna

! wahēk, wahēki

| Sequential/Topic Shifter  

The ''wahēki'' form is found only in Classical Minhast, and in Salmon Speaker, Wolf Speaker, and Horse Speaker poetry.

|-

| Presentational

| Somewhat similar to the Proximal Demonstrative particles, this particle is often used when the speaker physically presents an object for view to the listener. <br/><br/> It may be used as an Interruptive, with the approximate meaning "hey".  It is also used, especially with the verb marked with one of the Mirative affixes, to express slight exasperation, usually translated as "look", as in: ''Neħ, hatā' wattaksapki iknataharanaft tanusillekunkildūr'' "Look, I don't know why you left (the party) like that."  

|-

! še, šenek

| Connective

| This is actually a verbal clitic, not a particle.  It is always used in conjunction with ''kāra'' (see previous entry on ''kāra'')  

|-

! šukna

| Assertive

| This is properly an interjection and appears at the end of the sentence ''without'' a ''wa='' Connective.  When used in conjunction with a verb marked with the Irrealis, ''ka'' transforms the sentence into the Emphatic Imperative (see below).  Outside the Emphatic Imperative, this particle is otherwise rare, appearing only in Classical Minhast and some extremely conservative varieties of the Salmon Speaker dialect.  The ''ka'' particle also has variants that appear as verbal affixes, e.g. ''-ka-'',''-kka'' and ''-nka''.  These affixes are also rare, again appearing mostly in Classical Minhast and conservative Salmon Speaker subdialects.

|-

! nikā'

==== ''Wēš'' ====

{{Gloss

=== Word Order ===

What is almost inviolable,at least in multi-clausal sentences, is the position of the verb's clause-final position.  The main reason for this restriction is most likely because the verb, being extremely suffix-laden, includes clause-linking and coordinating affixes which occur in the Terminatives slot of the Minhast verb template.  Thus, the verb serves to mark clause boundaries and coordinate compound and complex sentences, hence the predominance of the verb's clause-final position.  Nevertheless, verbs do occur in non-final position under the following circumstances:

|phrase =Alan wassakikmanaft, Ru'awwankan suttu wantaslapimmakikminesankilwašša

| IPA =  

| translation = Alan (and Yešker) who were slain (that day), ''together'' may they ride hard with the Black Horse!  ''("Rest in peace")''

}}

| ''tazer min erakmast &gt;&gt; tazer min erak-mass=de '' (the birds'  feathers)

|-  

| ''Canadastim rakne''&gt;&gt; kanada=ast min rakne'' (Canadian tourists)

|-  

{{Gloss

| gloss = sister-3FS.ACC+3MS.NOM=ERG

| translation = His sister

}}  

{{Gloss

| gloss = COM.APPL-eat-PST-IMPF-TRANS-NMLZ INVERSE.VOL-see-box-PST-IMPF-INTRANS  

| translation = While the other one ate, he watched tv. ''(lit. "The one (non-focus) who ate beside him (focus), he (focus) tv-watched.")'

===== Purposive =====

* ''Hambin bāk wa=...'' It's none of your business (that)...

* ''Hambin bak wattāħ!'' It's none of your business!

* ''Ēlā hatā' min ādan?'' You can't make up your mind, can you? (lit. "The yes and no of which?", the rational deriving from "Yes? No? Which one?"

* ''Matti wabbakš?'' And your point is?

* ''Humme wattāħ/wattaħtem!'' Hail!!

# Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth. And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth.<br/><br/>

# Wahēk,  Šuxtānim Ikkūne hārannimā, ummurrat sut tuyyēran sararampi, išpiħyimannarunaft sarmannaru.

# Wahēk,  Šuxtānim Ikkūne kirimarannamā: "Sapim redad šūmikman, šūmī min kirimaran ittaħšikman,  indikanawikmabampi, rearan markanawikminesampiš."  

# Wahēk,  Šuxtānim Ikkūnē išpiknatarkennarunimmā ummurratiyār iknikmaran.

# Attim waggabgabalaram hittinristirħaku, Šuxtānim Ikkūnē kirimseššente išpikšempiharu, šarrat min suharaktillidēran išpiknatarkennaru.

=== Sapim Tayatta ("This Poison") ===

| translation = I see you have a problem of lawlessness in some of your less travelled roads.  A man, apparently suffering from a rabid dog bite, ambushed my party.  Some of us nearly shot him full of arrows, and others nearly ran him through with their šuhapna.  But we held fast and listened to this yapping fool tell us to do something about a dangerous bandit named Eró lurking just beyond the crossing at the brook.  I imagine he wanted me to have him put to death.  We ignored him, as we were very hungry and were already impatient with this delay. <br/><br/>Strange then it is when after we arrived here safely at Biktāt, I find a pile of letters waiting for me.  Letters from a man named Sorvin pleading me to "put in a kind word to Prefect Annu" to have Éro "disposed of", and that the lands that Éro had stolen be returned back to him.  Apparently this citizen of Dog Speaker Country thinks that the authority of his own Prefect can be overriden by the word of a foreign Ikkūne!

}}

== Addenda ==

! style="text-align:left" | OBL

| Oblique argument

|-

! style="text-align:left" | NOM

| Partitive

|-

| Reflexive

|-

*[https://soundcloud.com/nickcamporillo/the-black-horse-carries-my-beloved-with-drum The Black Horse Carries My Beloved]

*[https://soundcloud.com/nickcamporillo/gaggadi-min-sumbatide-a-thousand-arrows Gaggādi min Sumbātide "A Thousand Arrows"]

==== Mirrors ====

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