Hiirawə development thread

[Nortaneous]

Legal clusters are formed with a stop, /s/ or /y w/ + the glottal stop: /pˀ tˀ kˀ kʷˀ qˀ sˀ yˀ wˀ/. These are not realized as glottalized consonants phonetically, but instead as clusters with separate articulations for each consonant.

reminds me of Tsou for some reason

[TaylorS]

This is really cool! I like the independent and dependent noun distinction

[roninbodhisattva]

I like the independent and dependent noun distinction

What I've been thinking about this is having dependent roots be a root class that's maleable in it's syntactic category: some of them might be able to occur as either verb stems or noun stems.

[roninbodhisattva]

An example sentence for a text translation I'm working on:

kʷe saahkiara iskʷˀirəskʷihtii wiiˀ qere
kʷe saah-ki-ara iskʷˀi-r-əskʷit-hii wə=iˀ qeres
so horse-DIM-PL chief-CONN-house-LOC 3PL=there.AUX arrive.PERF
The dogs gathered at the chief's house.

Just playing around with some ideas. The abbreviations:

DIM diminutive
PL plural
CONN compound connective
LOC locative
3PL 3rd person plural
PERF perfective
AUX auxiliary

[roninbodhisattva]

Here's a slightly revised schematic of the Hiirawə verbal complex:

Verb stem:
(Preverb) - ... [ROOT + (Lexical suffixes)] - Thematic/transitivity suffix

The preverb is a discontinuous stem element which is used with some roots to form stems. There are a small number of lexical suffixes in the language, and these may bind with a verb root. The stem is completed by a thematic or transitivity suffix, which indicates which stem class the form belongs to (active, passive, descriptive). An inflected verb adds a mode prefix and tense/aspect suffix to the verb stem and a person marking pro-clitic:

Inflected verb:
Person = Outer Mode - PV - Inner Mode - V.Stem - (T/A)

There are two classes of mode prefixes: those which occur before any preverb ('outer' mode prefixes) and those which occur between a preverb and the stem ('inner' mode prefixes). Some outer and inner prefixes may coocur with one another. The T/A suffix is sometimes null.

Verbs may also be part of expanded verb predicates, which come in two forms. In the first type we find a verb inflected for mode and T/A preceded by a locative auxiliary, to which the person clitic binds. There may also be a directional/locative enclitic:

Locative verbal predicate:
Person = Aux Verb (=Loc/Dir)

The second type involves a subordinating or evidential proclitic, which blocks the binding of the personal proclitic directly to the verbal complex. In this case, the person clitic is hosted by an outside auxiliary. The two may also be combined:

Evidential/subordinate verbal predicate:
Person = Aux Evid/Sub = Verb

Combined expanded verbal predicate:
[Person = Aux [Evid/Sub = Aux Verb (=Loc/Dir)]]

An example of such an expanded predicate is:

wiiˀ unnə wəsˀuksa
wə=iˀ ur=iˀ wəθ-suks-a
3PL=AUX QUOT=here.AUX fight-RECIP-PERF
'It's said they fought there.'

[Acid Badger]

The more I read about Hiirawə the more I like it.

[roninbodhisattva]

Why thank you! Some examples on how the lexical suffixes and thematic suffixes interact:

(a) ruhcəmpisuksa
ruhc-mpi-suks-a
cut-face-ACT-PERF
'He went around cutting faces'

(b) cuhcəmpin
t=ruhc-mpi-nə-Ø
1>3=cut-face-TR-PERF
'I cut his face'

(c) ruhcəmpuˀut
ruhc-mpi-ut
cut-face-STAT
'His face is cut' / '(the) face is cut'

So in (a) you have the the root ruhc with the lexical suffix -mpi- 'face' and the thematic suffix -suks- which derives active intransitive verb stems (which indicate that the subject is an agent). In that case, the suffix bears a thematic relation of patient, indicating what is being cut. The form in (b) has a transitive thematic suffix -nə-; in that form the lexical suffix is understood as being part of the patient, so you get a possessive relationship between the third person object indicated in the person proclitic t= and the lexical suffix. In (c), the stative derives a stem indicating that the state applies to the lexical suffix.