139,486
edits
Talsmic languages: Difference between revisions
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*conversion of a former case system into a system of state distinctions (e.g. definiteness, possessedness, predicative/attributive, generic/specific) | *conversion of a former case system into a system of state distinctions (e.g. definiteness, possessedness, predicative/attributive, generic/specific) | ||
*rigidly head-initial word order | *rigidly head-initial word order | ||
**verb-initial clauses; modern Talsmic languages are topic prominent and thus have V2 | **verb-initial clauses; modern Talsmic languages are topic prominent and thus have V2 independent clauses and verb-initial dependent clauses. | ||
*heavy grammatical use of pronominal suffixes/enclitics on possessed nouns, verbs and prepositions, that index their dependents | *heavy grammatical use of pronominal suffixes/enclitics on possessed nouns, verbs and prepositions, that index their dependents | ||
**some descendants eventually creep toward being polysynthetic, supplanting former finite verbs with possessed infinitives/participles of complex compound verbs, and predicative nouns | **some descendants eventually creep toward being polysynthetic, supplanting former finite verbs with possessed infinitives/participles of complex compound verbs, and predicative nouns | ||