Kandi: Difference between revisions

Tsan exhibits what’s called [[Tsan#Predicate/argument flexibility|predicate/argument flexibility]]; all content words equivalent to English verbs, nouns and adjectives, can fill the role as predicate or as argument of a clause. The flexibility is due to that the lemma form of all content words corresponds to a predicative expression. All content words have a subject, which in the default is the third person: For example, the word for "dog" is ''kshawí'', but it is also equivalent to "it is a dog".

In essence, the distinction between noun and verb is blurred. All content words may be conjugated and form verbal phrases, they may modify each other, and they all have one of three [[w:grammatical gender|grammatical gender]]s.  

===Grammatical gender===

Tsan has a peculiar system of grammatical gender. The genders are purely natural: Women are feminine {{sc|f}}, men and males are masculine {{sc|m}}, and everything else is neuter {{sc|n}}.  

 

Do note, however, that the grammatical gender is not marked. Rather, there is a form of dual marking. The gender of the subject of a content word is marked to congruate with that of the topic; if the subject gender is the same as the topic, it is marked as the ''same'' {{sc|sam}}, whereas if the subject gender is different to that of the topic, it is marked as "different" {{sc|dif}}.

 

The Tsan conjugation is rather a form of affixation of relevant arguments.