Eadlan/Older draft/Netagic

Dnefese is a divergent descendant of Classical Netagin. It is notable for being tonal, unlike Classical Netagin.

Grammar

There are only two tenses: past and non-past.

Modern Netagin has an unusual form of split-ergativity in that ergativity marks tense in transitive clauses: When an ergative preposition is used, the clause is in the past tense; otherwise, it is in the non-past tense. This came about via the conflation of two prepositions să- 'in, at' and se3þe 'after' in an older split-ergative system. For intransitive clauses, the past tense is marked by an ergative preposition used on the subject, even though the subject is not syntactically ergative. Hence, Modern Netagin does not have genuine split-ergativity but rather a tensed pronoun system like Wolof.