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Nankôre: Difference between revisions
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==== The Nominal Hierarchy ==== | ==== The Nominal Hierarchy ==== | ||
Nankôre nouns, at first glance, appears very simple. They are not inflected for case, gender, nor do adpositions indicate their directional or positional relationships. Number is distinguished only in pronouns. Nevertheless, the nominal system has a complex hierarchy of animacy, which although unmarked, is a semantic feature of the noun and pronoun. This hierarchy of animacy is used to determine the syntactic roles of the core arguments of a clause, namely that of Agent and Patient. Arguments that are higher in the Animacy Hierarchy are by default considered Agents, whereas lower animacy arguments are considered Patients. If the syntactic roles of two core arguments are reversed, namely a lower animacy argument acts as an Agent on a higher animacy Patient argument, a special construction known as the Inverse Voice, involving the prefix ''tā | Nankôre nouns, at first glance, appears very simple. They are not inflected for case, gender, nor do adpositions indicate their directional or positional relationships. Number is distinguished only in pronouns. Nevertheless, the nominal system has a complex hierarchy of animacy, which although unmarked, is a semantic feature of the noun and pronoun. This hierarchy of animacy is used to determine the syntactic roles of the core arguments of a clause, namely that of Agent and Patient. Arguments that are higher in the Animacy Hierarchy are by default considered Agents, whereas lower animacy arguments are considered Patients. If the syntactic roles of two core arguments are reversed, namely a lower animacy argument acts as an Agent on a higher animacy Patient argument, a special construction known as the Inverse Voice, involving the prefix ''tā-/ta-'', is added to both the first verb in the verb phrase and the auxiliary verb ''itá'''. Thus, the Inverse Voice is doubly-marked. | ||
Where a given NP falls within the animacy hierarchy must be memorized in order to use the verbal inverse prefix ''tā | Where a given NP falls within the animacy hierarchy must be memorized in order to use the verbal inverse prefix ''tā-/ta-'' correctly (see section on [[Nankôre#Verbs|Verbs]] for additional details regarding inverse marking). | ||
The Nankôre nominal hierarchy has been traditionally classified along two axes, the first marking the noun class, and the second marking levels of hierarchy within a given class. Animacy along classes decrease as one traverses from Supernatural/Phenomonological onwards towards the Ephemeral. Animacy decreases as one goes down the Level axis. The following table illustrates the animacy relations between the noun hierarchies, although in reality, animacy is more complex than the table would suggest, as discourse and other contextual elements may influence a native speaker's expression of the hierarchy in a given utterance. | The Nankôre nominal hierarchy has been traditionally classified along two axes, the first marking the noun class, and the second marking levels of hierarchy within a given class. Animacy along classes decrease as one traverses from Supernatural/Phenomonological onwards towards the Ephemeral. Animacy decreases as one goes down the Level axis. The following table illustrates the animacy relations between the noun hierarchies, although in reality, animacy is more complex than the table would suggest, as discourse and other contextual elements may influence a native speaker's expression of the hierarchy in a given utterance. | ||