Peshpeg

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 a split ergative one, with the evolution of the ergative subsystem clearly driven by Minhast's ergative-absolutive alignment. 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. 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 language is head initial: modifiers such as adjectives usually follow their head noun; prepositions are used in adpositional 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.

Morphology

Peshpeg was originally a nominative-accusative language. The language also had several noun classes that eventually collapsed into the present three-way declension system based on natural gender, animacy, and countability and concreteness. Today, the language has developed into a split ergative system, based on the animacy hierarchy of the noun class system. Nominative-accusative marking appears in first second pronominal forms, and Class I pronominal forms. These pronominal forms lie on the upper end of the animacy hierarchy, while all other forms are considered low animacy forms. Class II nouns were originally indeclinable and fell lower on the animacy scale, although they displayed some level of agency and thus took different affixes to denote their noun class. As Minhast expanded into Peshpeg-speaking lands, agent marking developed in these lower animacy nouns through the incorporation of the Minhast ergative marker =de, realized in Peshpeg Class II nouns as the submorpheme -d-. Agency for low animacy nouns is considered a marked condition, hence this explains the use of ergative morphology to indicate the marked condition. The unmarked form was reinterpreted as the absolutive case.

As for the Class III nouns, they remained unmarked for both case and number. This is unsurprising as these nouns are inherently uncountable, and statistically speaking, their role as agents is an uncommon, if not rare occurrence. The nominative-accusative marking of Class I nouns and the ergative marking of Class II nouns are sufficient to disambiguate the semantic role a Class III noun when it is a core argument. Ambiguity arises when two Class III nouns occupy both agent and patient roles in a transitive clause. In those cases, it is usually assumed that if one of the nouns was mentioned in discourse before the other, that noun functions as the agent. This indicates that in clause chains, Peshpeg employs an S/A pivot, in contrast to Minhast's robust S/O pivot, a reflection of its ergativity underlying the syntactic level as well.

Nouns

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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 preserve the original nominative-accusative system, 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, under Minhast influence, have developed an ergative-absolutive pattern: they take the ergative -du/-dumu markers, the -d- submorpheme etymologically derived from the Minhast ergative clitic =de. An noticeable characteristic of these nouns is that they are considered to be low animacy nouns. Lastly, Class III nouns take no marking for case or number. Nouns falling in this class include certain body parts, mass nouns, and abstract nouns.

Cases

Case marking on the core arguments of a verb depend on the declension a given noun falls under. Class I nouns follow a nominative-accusative pattern, Class II nouns follow an ergative-absolutive pattern, and Class III nouns take no marking whatsoever.

	Class I		Class II		Class III
	Sg	Pl	Sg	Pl	Sg	Pl
Ergative			-du	-dunu	-ri/-rin
Nominative-Absolutive	-∅	-mu	-a	-na
Accusative	-jor	-jomu

Kodzorin iruni daltashi.
'kodzoɾɪn ɪɾ'uni dal'taʃi
kodzorin-∅ i-ru-ni daltashi
PN-NOM PST-go-CL1 alone
Kodzorin went unaccompanied.

Torzha irumvi daltashi.
torzha i-ru-mvi daltashi
girl-ABS PST-go-CL2 alone
The girl went unaccompanied.

Torzhadu Kodzorinjor gumbiri jorlu.
torzha-du kodzorin-jor gumbiri jorlu.
girl.CL2-ERG.S hammer_PN-ACC.S CL2.S.PST hit
The girl struck Kodzorin.

Golahát irunki daltashi.
golahát i-ru-nki daltashi
in_duari.SG PST-go-CL3.S alone
The Ín Duári (man) went unaccompanied.

Irudak gajak gambi.
i-ru-dak gajak gambi
PST-go-INF foolish AUX.CLS3.PRS
Going there was foolish (lit. "Having gone there is foolish.")

Tazh abimon kor dezhak gambi.
tazh abi=mon kor dezhak gambi
obedience all=CONN virtue supercede AUX.CLS3.PRS
Obedience outweighs all (other) virtues.

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 morphosyntactic alignment.

	First Person		Second Person		Class I		Class II		Class III
	Sg	Pl	Sg	Pl	Sg	Pl	Sg	Pl	Sg	Pl
Ergative							gudu	gordu	yesu
Absolutive	su	ne	u	go	e	nu	gu	gor
Accusative	suri	neri	uri	gori	eri	nori

Determiners

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	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

Verbs

Peshpeg verbs consist of an inflected auxiliary followed by a verbal noun. The auxiliary developed from the fusion of a bound subject marker to the connective particle mon, derived from the Minhast connective min, to the locative suffix -bi, plus a tense-aspect marker (if any), followed by the verbal noun which contains the semantic content of the verb phrase.

Orun mon golach on nodórji gomboji uzan.
/'oɾum mon 'golatʃon nod'oɾd͡ʒi 'gombod͡ʒi 'uzan/
orun=mon golach=mon nodor-ji gor-mon-bi-ji uzan
many CONN Ín_Duári CONN to.serve-AGT CL2-LOC-FUT riot
Many of the Ín Duári slaves will revolt.

If the verb is transitive, an object agreement clitic attaches to the beginning of the auxiliary. The clitic is obligatory, even if an overt object is expressed:

Tunkul gisumbiri yilár.
/'tuŋkyl gɪ'sumbɪɾi jɪ'la:ɾ/
tonkul gi=su-mon-bi-ri yilár
crockpot CL2.PL.ABS=1S.NOM-CONN-LOC-PST break
I broke the crockpots (lit. "Crockpot them-I-of-in-past breakage")

The pronominal suffix prefixes are reductions of the original nominative. Ambiguity arises in the Class II and Class III nouns when the pronominal affix/clitic is followed by vowel due to phonologic mergers. The pronominal agreement markers appear in the following table:

	First Person		Second Person		Class I		Class II		Class III
	Sg	Pl	Sg	Pl	Sg	Pl	Sg	Pl	Sg	Pl
Before a consonant:	su-	ve-	mu-	jo-	ne-	hu-	gu-	gi-	gu-	ga-
Before a vowel:	s-	v-	m-	jor-	n-	h-	g-

Syntax

Constituent order

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

Example texts

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.