Peshpeg

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Introduction

The Peshpeg language, or Peshpeg humbi todak inlak "true humans speak this way", is a highly endangered language in the valleys of the Kilmay Rī Mountains and the prefectures of south-central Minhay. The language is considered moribund: according to the last census, only about ninety fluent speakers remain, all older than sixty years. Younger generations speak only Minhast, from either the Wolf Speaker, Stone Speaker, or City Speaker dialects. Efforts to revitalize the language have been largely unsuccessful; with the exception of the City Speakers, most Minhast are either apathetic or even actively hostile to revitalization efforts. Social and economic discrimination towards the Peshpegs has only accelerated the decline of the language.

Peshpeg is classified as a language isolate. Any similarities to the Minhast language are due to language contact, with most of the influences being unidirectional; only a handful of Peshpeg words, most of them related to the fauna and flora of their original homeland, have been adopted by the Wolf Speaker and Stone Speaker dialects. However, Minhast has had an enormous impact on the Peshpeg language; close to 70% of the Peshpeg lexicon comes from Minhast, the original base-10 numerical system has been supplanted by the vegisimal system of the dominant language, and most noticeably the original morphosyntactic alignment has shifted from a nominative-accusative type to an ergative-absolutive one. Some linguists have explored the possibility of a relationship with Ín Duári, another endangered, non-Minhast language, but plausible evidence for such a relationship has not been demonstrated.

Peshpeg is classified as an SOV language, with an ergative-absolutive morphosyntactic alignment. The language apparently had an extensive vowel harmony system, which has been preserved to some extent in its present-day form. Aggluginative and fusional features appear in various areas of the grammar.

The verb system distinguishes tense, aspect, number, and person. Interestingly two verbal subsystems co-exist, one reflecting an older nominative-accusative system, and the other reflecting an ergative-absolutive system. Although most ergative-absolutive languages are split, rarely does the split occur based on source language; splits in ergative languages typically occur based on tense/aspect (as in various Iranian languages, notably Kurdish), free versus bound pronominal forms (as in the Minhast dialects of the Salmonic Branch, and certain Australian languages like Murinypata), and clause types (e.g. Yup'ik, Inuktitut, and other Eskimoan languages). The nominative-accusative subsystem is limited to a handful of verbs, mostly auxiliary verbs such as rui "to do" and joa/jora "to go" (used to express the future tense), as well as one perceptual verb, bu "to see". But even within this system some inflections, such as all of the plural forms of the non-present tenses, person-number forms of the ergative-absolutive subsystem appear. The newer ergative-absolutive system employs an auxiliary verb plus a verbal noun. The older subsystem has agreement markers for only the subject, whereas the newer subsystem bears obligatory polypersonal marking on the auxiliary.

The language is head initial: modifiers such as adjectives usually follow their head noun; prepositions are used in appositional phrases, and relative clauses follow the NP they modify, attributes associated with head-initial languages. Once again, however, the influence of Minhast has introduced a certain level of fluidity, such as numerical modifiers precede their noun heads; this was probably facilitated by the replacement of the original decimal system with Minhast's vegisimal system.


Phonology

Orthography

Consonants

Vowels

Prosody

Stress

Intonation

Phonotactics

Morphophonology

Morphology

Nouns

[stub]

Declensions

Peshpeg nouns fall into three declension classes, simply called Class I, Class II, and Class III. The noun classes roughly coincide with natural gender and/or animacy. Class I nouns, which can take ergative marking and also mark for number, are typically male, or consist of nouns that are associated with male attributes, particularly weapons. Certain animals, such as horses, meteorological phenomena, and supernatural events and divinities also fall within this class. Class II nouns contain all other nouns that can be counted. These nouns do not take ergative marking as they are considered to have little or no agency. Lastly, Class III nouns, also do not take ergative marking, nor are they marked for number. Nouns falling in this class include certain body parts, mass nouns, and abstract nouns.

Cases

  Class I Class II Class III
  Sg Pl Sg Pl Sg Pl
Ergative -du -dumu -a -na -ri/-rin
Absolutive -∅ -mu

Pronouns

Independent Pronouns

The independent pronouns show a consistent ergative-absolutive pattern, identifiable by the suffix -du attached to the absolutive form of the pronoun. The suffix is derived from the Minhast ergative clitic =de, incorporated into the language sometime during the Wolf Speaker invasions of the mid 1800's. This coincided with the rearrangement of the verbal system and shift from its original nominative-accusative alignment to its present-day ergative-absolutive morphosyntactic alignment.

  First Person Second Person Class I Class II Class III
  Sg Pl Sg Pl Sg Pl Sg Pl Sg Pl
Ergative sudu vudu undu jordu undu hudu gudu gurdu gudu gordu
Absolutive su ve umu jor ne hu gu gir gu gar

Determiners

[Stub]


//Template table

  Singular Plural
Masculine -g- -gda-
Neuter I -n- -vda-
Feminine
Neuter II
Collective
-sh-



galvdanda
/gav'dandʌ/
gal-vda-nda
horse-DEF.MP-COM

with the horses

Postpositions

Numbers

Verbs

Peshpeg verbs mark for tense and aspect. Verbs fall in three broad classes, based on how they mark the past vs. the non-past tenses: the zu-/vu- class, the etymologically related z-/v- class, and the u-/u- class. Another feature of the verb is that plural verb stems get truncated, e.g.zeganuadzh "I spoke", from the stem -egan-; vs. zegzua "We spoke", from the stem -eg-.


Syntax

Constituent order

Old and Middle Peshpeg exhibited VSO order, but the modern language is now an SOV language due to Minhast influence.

Noun phrase

Verb phrase

Sentence phrase

Dependent clauses

Example texts

Orun mon golách mon nodorji uzanio pepak
/oɾun mon go'latʃ mon nodoɾd͡ʒi u'zanjo 'pepak/

Many of the Ín Duári slaves revolted that day


Dozun sujun guverin.
/dozyn sud͡ʒun gyvɛɾɪn/
doč=gun su-j-mon guve-rin
be.red.PST 1S-GEN-CONN face-CL3S

My face was red.

Other resources