Minhast: Difference between revisions

I would like to thank  [[User:Nicolasstraccia|Nicolás Straccia]] for providing me inspiration and help on developing the Minhast dialectology.

1. The overwhelming majority of ergative languages display some nominative-accusative characteristics.  This feature is called ''split ergativity''.  Minhast is unusual from a morphological standpoint in that the split seems to be absent throughout its grammar, save for a split appearing in the third person inaniminate pronominal affixes in transitive verbs, and in possessive constructions.  However, looking more closely at the rest of the pronominal agreement affixes, the segment corresponding to agents/possessors shows no difference with that of the absolutive pronominal affixes for intransitive verbs.  This provides evidence suggesting that Minhast does possess split ergativity, the split manifesting in the pronominal agreement affixes.  Splits in ergative languages are language-specific: some languages display nominative-accusative alignment based on tense-aspect features, others in the semantics of the NP (particularly along animacy lines), and others in pronominal agreement markers, as in the case of Minhast. <br/><br/>

Classical Minhast provides the most conclusive evidence that split ergativity was prevalent in the pronominal agreement markers; a submorpheme ''-i-'' is consistently found in the agent segment of the portmanteau affixes throughout the majority of first and second persons, with a couple exhibiting tripartite alignment.  This submorpheme originally occurred in the ''patient'' segment in Old Minhast inscriptions, but this submorpheme migrated to the agent segment due to various sound changes, transforming the formerly unmarked agent segment into a marked nominative.  The marked nominative form also occurred in intransitive verbs, thus split ergativity in Minhast can be ultimately traced to the agreement affixes, even though the submorpheme was lost due to further phonological processes by the end of Early Modern Period.