Nahónda: Difference between revisions

The Conjugation Class slot is occupied by one of three suffixes or their allomorphs, ''-no'', ''-né'', and ''-na''.  These suffixes are descended from Proto-Nahenic auxiliaries, ''*ne'nok'' "do", and ''*ya'na:ʔ'' "be".  In Classical Minhast and many of the modern northern dialects, these became the transitive ''-un'' and intransitive ''-an'' affixes, and ''-u'' and ''-an'' in all other dialects.  In Nankôre, only the intransitive affix survives as the stative auxiliary ''iná'''.  While both Minhast and Nankôre preserve a distinction of transitive-intransitive or active-stative meanings from the protolanguage's auxiliaries, a considerable amount of syncretism has occurred in Nahónda.  So while a slightly higher number of active verbs end with ''-no'' and stative verbs with ''-né'' or ''-na'' in their basic forms, many active verbs have ''-né'' or ''-na'' endings, and ''-no'' for stative verbs.  Interestingly, when a third person singular agent acts on a third person singular patient, the verb obligatorily takes the ''-no'' ending, as third person singular agents and third person singular patients both take null marking. Its Minhast relative shares this null-marking feature, so this so-called "''no''-flipping" of ''-né/-na'' endings is the primary way of cross-indexing the agent when it experiences pro-drop.<ref>The Siouan languages also null-mark third person singular agents and patients, but there is no reason to conclude that they contributed to ''no''-flipping.</ref>