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Minhast/Noun Incorporation: Difference between revisions
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Oftentimes, agreement marking occurs under certain restrictions, and/or exhibit irregularities in gender-number concord. When agreement marking does appear, they tend to occur with collective or mass nouns, such as the inherently collective ''iyuššit'', and only with certain verbs, particularly ones indicating movement, and even then ''iyuššit'' triggers agreement marking in a small fraction among these verbs. An example where agreement marking is lacking with the very same collective noun follows in the next example. Note that the verb ''-adu-'' ("be many"), unlike ''-wakkay-'', is not a motion verb. The lack of an overt agreement marker with ''-adu-'' points towards a zero-valent interpretation: | |||
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| translation = The storm clouds hung (over us) (lit. "The storm clouds stood upright") | | translation = The storm clouds hung (over us) (lit. "The storm clouds stood upright") | ||
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Diachronic factors may explain the irregularities involving agreement marking for a subset of incorporated nouns interacting with a subset of verbs. The Proto-Nahenic ancestor originally had an extensive hierarchical noun class system, remnants of which remain in Minhast's relative Nahónda as evidenced by even more irregularities in the latter, and in its other relative Nankôre, whose elaborate nominal hierarchy may be a preservation of the protolanguage's original noun class system or an extensive elaboration of it. The irregular agreement marking triggered by ''-iyuššit-'' among a subset of a select class of verbs suggests that the noun once fell within a noun class of a particular animacy level. When the protolanguage split, the original noun class system were restructured in the daughter languages; further reductions and loss, particularly in both Minhast and Nahónda, left a residue in the form of the irregular agreement marking seen today. | Diachronic factors may explain the irregularities involving agreement marking for a subset of incorporated nouns interacting with a subset of verbs. The Proto-Nahenic ancestor originally had an extensive hierarchical noun class system, remnants of which remain in Minhast's relative Nahónda as evidenced by even more irregularities in the latter, and in its other relative Nankôre, whose elaborate nominal hierarchy may be a preservation of the protolanguage's original noun class system or an extensive elaboration of it. The irregular agreement marking triggered by ''-iyuššit-'' among a subset of a select class of verbs suggests that the noun once fell within a noun class of a particular animacy level. When the protolanguage split, the original noun class system were restructured in the daughter languages; further reductions and loss, particularly in both Minhast and Nahónda, left a residue in the form of the irregular agreement marking seen today. | ||