Legend: Definitions, Terms, <Text>, [IPA], -Tags-, and "Glosses".
The order of phrase constituents is as follows:
Determiner QuantityWord Participials RelativeClauses
Each constituent position (but not all) may be empty; however, a determiner requires an additional word. A quantity word appearing by itself or with only a determiner has a gendered form; otherwise, it has its basic form. An participial may take a single argument, limited to absolutive or ergative case. Otherwise, a relative clause must be used.
The determiners are shown in the following table:
| Word | Tag | Name | Usage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spc | Specific | ||
| Def | Definite | ||
| Prox | Proximal demonstrative | ||
| Medi | Medial demonstrative | ||
| Dist | Distal demonstrative | ||
| CQ | Content Question | ||
| Uni | Universal Quantifier | ||
| Nul | Nullar Quantifier |
If no determiner appears, the phrase is indefinite.
A clause is either copular, full, secondary, or participial. A copular clause consists of a complement phrase followed by a subject phrase. Non-copular clauses are headed by a single predicate (or occasionally a pronoun), which may be followed by arguments (either a phrase or a pronoun), adverbs, and secondary clauses. The absolutive case argument (if one appears) usually precedes any other argument in the clause.
A secondary clause is embedded in a full clause. Its head word must have either a host agent or host patient affix and may have only one other argument.
Participial clauses are embedded in phrases. One of the head predicate arguments must be 3rd person with no corresponding argument appearing; this agrees in gender and number with any other participial clauses or relative clauses in the same phrase.
The coreference affixes have 2 uses: in secondary clauses and in chained clauses. For the former, the source clause is the clause containing the secondary clause. For the latter, it's the preceding full clause (in which case they act similar to switch-reference markers). The host agent affixes (HA) coreference the agent of the head of the source clause while the host patient affixes (HP) coreference the patient. The coreference affixes are redefined by each full clause.
Each argument phrase or pronoun in a verbal clause is marked for case using prepositions, shown in the following table:
| Word | Tag | Name | Usage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abs | Absolutive | patient, subject? | |
| Erg | Ergative | agent (of finite) | |
| Gen | Genitive | agent (of participle), whole | |
| Dat | Dative | recipient, beneficiary | |
| ? | Ins | Instrumental | instrument, route |
| ? | Loc | Locative | location, destination |
| ? | Abl | Ablative | source, origin |
| Voc | Vocative | addressee |
The instrumental, locative, and ablative cases will probably be replaced by secondary clauses. However, there may be a new case for degree of comparison phrases.
If the patient of the head of a clause is 3rd person, there may be a corresponding argument, agreeing in gender and number. This argument takes the absolutive case except when the head word is trivalent, when it takes the dative case. If the agent of the head of a clause is 3rd person, there may be a corresponding argument, agreeing in gender and number. This argument takes the genitive case if the clause is participial or secondary and the ergative case if the clause is full.
The following table shows typical argument roles for the various classes of common predicates:
| Label | Class | Gloss | Agent Role | Patient Role |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| _UU | rain | cause, source | ? | |
| _UA | happy | cause, source | subject | |
| _UI | small | cause, source | subject | |
| _AU | run | actor | location | |
| _AA | trivalent | give | donor | recipient |
| _AA | other | flock | modifier | head |
| mother | child | mother | ||
| friend | friending | friended | ||
| _AI | hand | whole | part | |
| near | locatee | location | ||
| see | perceiver, etc. | image, etc. | ||
| _II | grove | modifier | head |
For names of persons (HUA) and things (HUI), the agent argument specifies the user of the name.
The format of a relative clause is as follows:
Rel FullClause Case RP
The case of the relative pronoun (RP) specifies the role of the phrase within the relative clause.
A clause chain consists of a series of non-embedded clauses, the types of which are initial, conditional, foreground, and background. Background clauses function as complement clauses and adjunct clauses. Every chain contains an initial clause.
A foreground clause continues the main part of the narrative started by an initial or conditional clause. Foreground clauses are introduced by conjunctions and have unmarked aspect.
A complement clause is a background clause introduced by the conjunction Cpl. It appears instead of the absolutive argument of its preceding matrix clause. The aspect of a complement clause is unmarked, the semantics dependent on the context.
Predicates that appear as the head of the matrix clause include the modal auxiliaries, other perception or mental state predicates, and informational predicates. The modal auxiliaries are shown in the following table:
| Word | Tag | Description |
|---|---|---|
| DN | Deontic Necessity | |
| DP | Deontic Possibility | |
| VN | Volitive Necessity | |
| VP | Volitive Possibility |
An adjunct clause appears in addition to the arguments of its host clause. Adjunct clauses are introduced by conjunctions. Temporal adjunct clauses use the aspect of the head predicate to specify the temporal relationship between the host clause and the adjunct clause. This is shown in the following table:
| Tag | Name | Usage |
|---|---|---|
| Ret | Retrospective | host after adjunct |
| Pro | Prospective | host before adjunct |
| Sta | Stative | host during adjunct |
| Prg | Progressive | |
| Aor | Aoristic | adjunct during host |
A polar question begins with the polar question particle (PQ). A content question contains the content question determiner (CQ) or a content question pronoun.
page started: 2015.Jan.27 Tue
current date: 2015.Feb.28 Sat
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