Peshpeg: Difference between revisions

The Širkattarnaft was eventually adopted by the Peshpegs, to which they added diacritics and additional vowel signs to represent sounds not represented in the original orthography.  During the late 1870's, an Evangelist missionary, Aldous Green Huntly, sneaked into Minhay aboard a Chinese merchant vessel returning from the United States.  Hounded by hostile Gull Speakers who discovered him in the port city of Kissamut, he fled west, skirting around the major villages in Dog Speaker Country until he stumbled upon a Peshpeg settlement.  There, he was welcomed, and he began to preach and he successfully converted many of the villagers to the Evangelical sect.  He transcribed their language into a modified Latin script in order to translate the Bible to them.  The script came to be known as the ''Evanjelastarin'' or ''Evanjelastarün'', and soon this script was adopted by Peshpegs throughout Minhay, although the Širkattarnaft continued to be used in correspondence with the Minhast.

Peshpeg nouns are highly inflected, making distinctions in gender, animacy, case, and number.  These distinctions are marked by suffixes that show agglutinative or fusional characteristics.

Peshpeg's three-way split in its morphological alignment underlies its nominal case-number system.  Thus, the case-number system reflects the nominal system's animacy hierarchy.  A nominative-accusative pattern among Class I nouns, an ergative-absolutive pattern in Class II nouns, and a direct alignment in its Class III nouns.  The nominative-accusative pattern in Class I nouns marks direct objects with the submorpheme ''-j-''.  The ergative-absolutive system is distinguished by the submorpheme ''-d-'' for ergative arguments.  Class III nouns do not distinguish agent-patient roles, reflecting the direct alignment of these nouns.

The split ergativity of the language can appear in the same clause.  This situation arises when Class I and Class II arguments co-occur as core arguments in transitive clauses, demonstrated in the next two examples:

|phrase = Torzhadu Kodzorinjor munembiri jorlu.

| gloss = in_duari-CL3 PST-go-CL3.S alone

The auxiliary ''-mb-'' of compound verbs developed from the fusion of a bound pronominal marker to the connective particle ''mon'' (possibly derived from the Minhast connective ''min''), which is attached to the suffix ''-bi''¹, plus a tense-aspect marker.  The verbal noun contains the semantic content of the verb phrase.

{| class="wikitable"

| gu- || -su- || -mon- ||-bi- || -ri- || -ai

|phrase = Orun mon golach on nodórji gomboji uzan.

| IPA = /'oɾum mon 'golatʃon nod'oɾd͡ʒi 'gombod͡ʒi 'uzan/

| morphemes = orun=mon golach=mon nodor-ji gor-mon-bi-ji uzan

| gloss = many CONN Ín_Duári CONN to.serve-NMLZ.AGT CL2-LOC-FUT riot  

The pronominal agreement markers appear in the following table:  

{| class="bluetable lightbluebg mw-collapsible"

|+ '''Present'''

! rowspan="2" | Person 

! colspan="2" | Number

|-  

|-

|-

|-

|-

|-

| colspan="2" style="text-align:center"|yódori<br/> yadombi

|}

{| class="bluetable lightbluebg mw-collapsible"

|+ '''Past'''

! rowspan="2" | Person 

! colspan="2" | Number

|-  

|-

|-

|-

|-

|-

| colspan="2" style="text-align:center"|yódori<br/> yodombori

|}

{| class="bluetable lightbluebg mw-collapsible"

|+ '''Future'''

! rowspan="2" | Person 

! colspan="2" | Number

|-  

|-

|-

|-

|-

|-

| colspan="2" style="text-align:center"|yodoroji<br/> ojori

|}

Unlike periphrastic verbs, which require two separate lexemes, an auxiliary verb plus a verb root, synthetic verbs encode all verbal inflections on the verb root itself.  Synthetic verbs are conservative, preserving the original Peshpeg verbal paradigms.   

|+ '''Present'''

! rowspan="2" | Person

! 1

| uzni

! 2

| uzi

| uzusti

! Class I

! Class II

| uzumvi

| uzumvit

|-

| colspan="2" style="text-align:center"|uzunki <br/> urunkik

|-

|}

 

*<span style="font-weight:bold; font-style:italic"> ru-</span> to go

 

|+ '''Present'''

! rowspan="2" | Person 

! colspan="2" | Number

|-

| rusti

! Class I

| ru

| ruti

! Class II

| rumvi

| rumvit

! Class III

| colspan="2" style="text-align:center"|runki <br/> runkik

|+ '''Past'''

! rowspan="2" | Person

! 1

| iruni  <!-- i-ru-n-i -->

! 2

| iruzi <!-- i-ru-z-i -->

| irusti <!-- i-ru-z-t-i -->

! Class I

| iru <!-- i-ru-i -->

| iruti <!-- i-ru-t-i -->

! Class II

| irumvi <!-- i-ru-mv-i -->

| irumvit <!-- i-ru-nv-i-t -->

|-

| colspan="2" style="text-align:center"|irunki <!-- i-ru-nk-i <br/> irunkik < i-ru-nk-i-t -->

 

|+ '''Future'''

! rowspan="2" | Person 

! colspan="2" | Number

|-

|-

| turuni

| turunti

! Class I

| turu

| turuti

! Class II

| turumvi

| turumvit

! Class III

| colspan="2" style="text-align:center"|turunki <br/> turunkik

|+ '''Present'''

! rowspan="2" | Person

! 1

| yeni

! 2

| yezi

| yesti

! Class I

! Class II

| yemvi

| yemvit

! Class III

| colspan="2" style="text-align:center"|yenki<br/> yenkik

|}

 

{| class="bluetable lightbluebg mw-collapsible"

|+ '''Past'''

! rowspan="2" | Person 

! colspan="2" | Number

|-

! 1

| iyeni

| iyenti

|-

| iyezi

| iyesti

|-

| iye

| iyeti

| iyemvit

|-

| colspan="2" style="text-align:center"|iyenki <br/> iyenkik

|+ '''Future'''

! rowspan="2" | Person

! Class I

| taye

! Class II

| tayemvi

| tayemvit

! Class III

|}

 

 

 

{| class="bluetable lightbluebg mw-collapsible"

|+ '''Present'''

! rowspan="2" | Person 

! colspan="2" | Number

|-

|-

| torni < tor-n-i

| torunti < tor-n-t-i

|-

| torzi < tor-z-i

| toristi < tor-z-t-i

! Class I

| tori < tor-i

| torti < tor-t-i

! Class II

| torumvi < tor-mv-i

| tormvit < tor-nv-i-t

! Class III

| colspan="2" style="text-align:center"|torunki < tor-nk-i <br/> torunkik < tor-nk-i-t

 

|+ '''Past'''

! rowspan="2" | Person

! 1

| itorni < i-tor-n-i

! 2

| itorzi < i-tor-z-i

| itoristi < i-tor-z-t-i

! Class I

! Class II

| itorumvi < i-tor-mv-i

| itormvit < i-tor-nv-i-t

! Class III

| colspan="2" style="text-align:center"|itorunki < i-tor-nk-i <br/> itorunkik < i-tor-nk-i-t

|}

 

{| class="bluetable lightbluebg mw-collapsible"

|+ '''Future'''

! rowspan="2" | Person 

! colspan="2" | Number

|-

|-

| tatorni < ta-tor-n-i

| tatorunti < ta-tor-n-t-i

|-

| tatorzi < ta-tor-z-i

| tatoristi < ta-tor-z-t-i

! Class I

| tatori < ta-tor-i

| tatorti < ta-tor-t-i

|-

| tatorumvi < ta-tor-mv-i

| tatormvit < ta-tor-nv-i-t

|-

| colspan="2" style="text-align:center"|tatorunki < ta-tor-nk-i <br/> tatorunkik < ta-tor-nk-i-t

 

*<span style="font-weight:bold; font-style:italic"> jóru-</span> to say