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Kootayi: Difference between revisions
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===Pitch accent=== | ===Pitch accent=== | ||
Kootayi is a [[w:Pitch-accent language|pitch accent]] language and it is a contrastive feature in the language. Every stressed syllable can have either '''rising''' (marked with an acute accent) or '''falling''' (usually unmarked) pitch. Note that rising pitch here is used relative to the contiguous syllables, so if a word contains accented vowels the first will be higher in pitch than the second but the second will be higher in pitch than the syllables directly surrounding it, and that syllable will receive stress, but when there is no accented vowels, the word will receive a primary stress and have a falling pitch, when the first syllable is the lowest in pitch. An example of a pitch contrast is ''íístok'' [ˈǐːs.tʊk] "silence", ''iistók'' [iːs.ˈtǒk] "friend" and ''iistok'' [ˈîːs.tʊk] "bush". If a word contains more than three syllables, the pattern will repeat every two syllables: ''iskóótayi'' is thus pronounced [ɪs.ˈkǒː.ta.jɪ̌] as if written ''"iskóótayí"'', however this is often ommited in a fast speech. | Kootayi is a [[w:Pitch-accent language|pitch accent]] language and it is a contrastive feature in the language. Every stressed syllable can have either '''rising''' (marked with an acute accent) or '''falling''' (usually unmarked) pitch. Note that rising pitch here is used relative to the contiguous syllables, so if a word contains accented vowels the first will be higher in pitch than the second but the second will be higher in pitch than the syllables directly surrounding it, and that syllable will receive stress, but when there is no accented vowels, the word will receive a primary stress and have a falling pitch, when the first syllable is the lowest in pitch. An example of a pitch contrast is ''íístok'' [ˈǐːs.tʊk] "silence", ''iistók'' [iːs.ˈtǒk] "friend" and ''iistok'' [ˈîːs.tʊk] "bush". If a word contains more than three syllables, the pattern will repeat every two syllables: ''iskóótayi'' is thus pronounced [ɪs.ˈkǒː.ta.jɪ̌] as if written ''"iskóótayí"'', however this is often ommited in a fast speech. | ||
==Morphology== | |||
Like most Settameric languages, Kootayi is synthetic and agglutinative, Two main grammatical categories are nouns and verbs, but there are also many adverb-like particles and pronouns (which morphologically behave the same way as nouns). All nouns are required to be inflected for animacy and are classified as either '''animate''' or '''inanimate'''. Verbs are inflected to match the animacy of all of its arguments. Animacy is a grammatical construct for noun classification, inanimate objects, such as drums and most nouns that are not alive are inanimate, though some abstract things, such as "death" are animate. Verbs are marked with person markers which must agree with the animacy of its arguments. However, animacy is not rigid, in stories in which grammatically inanimate objects are markedly anthropomorphized, such as talking flowers, animate 3rd person markers will be used. Nouns can also be inflected for number: either singular or plural. There is no dual number, like in many other Settameric languages. Verbal inflection also matches the number of its arguments. Because of its rich morphology, word order in Kootayi is flexible, however the SVO form (subject-verb-object) is preferred. | |||
===Nouns=== | |||
Noun classes are divided into two categories, based on grammatical gender: animate and inanimate. Additionally, all nouns must be marked for number. When a sentence contains two or more nouns as arguments, proximate and obviative markings are used to disambiguate. There may only be one proximate argument in any given sentence but multiple obviates are permissible. All agreement suffixes attach to noun stems and take eight forms, as shown in the table below: | |||
{| class="wikitable" | |||
! rowspan="3" | | |||
! colspan="2" |Inanimate | |||
! rowspan="5" | | |||
! colspan="2" |Animate | |||
|- | |||
| colspan="2" | "knife" | |||
| colspan="2" | "woman" | |||
|- | |||
! Singular | |||
! Plural | |||
! Singular | |||
! Plural | |||
|- | |||
! Proximate | |||
| iksiik | |||
| iksiik'''in''' | |||
| yist'''o''' | |||
| yisto'''in''' | |||
|- | |||
! Obviate | |||
| iksiik'''a''' | |||
| iksiik'''ii''' | |||
| yisto'''ʼni''' | |||
| yisto'''on''' | |||
|} | |||
[[Category:Languages]] [[Category:Settameric languages]] | [[Category:Languages]] [[Category:Settameric languages]] | ||