languagesofgalhaf:languagesofgalhaf:This is a partial verb paradigm for Class I verbs in Shivrashani
languagesofgalhaf:languagesofgalhaf:This is a partial verb paradigm for Class I verbs in Shivrashanian. Class I verbs are those descended from vowel-final verbs in Kasshian. I’ve posted a more complete paradigm previously, but there’s been a few minor adjustmentsThere are several syncretisms here, and in none of these are all nine cells distinctIn the present/imperfect observational and inferential, the 2nd person singular, 3rd person singular animate, and 3rd person plural animate are all homophonous. In the present/imperfect negative, the 3rd person singular animate and 3rd person plural animate are homophones. In the preterite, the 3rd person forms are all distinct, but the 2nd person singular and plural are homophonesI am considering the possibility of an analogical restructuring, such that the 2nd person plural and the 3rd person animate plural are always syncretized. Thus, in the present/imperfect observational and inferential, the endings -defne̜e̜ and -gefne̜e̜ would be extended to 3rd person plural animate, so that the plural has the same 2nd person/3rd person animate syncretism as the singular, and a number distinction is simultaneously restored to the 3rd person animate. In the present/imperfect negative the 2nd person plural ending -dre̜fi̜ne̜e̜ is likewise extended to 3rd person animate, while in the preterite, the 3rd person animate plural endings -bŏ̜́ste̜ and -bŏ̜ste̜ste̜ are extended to 2nd person. In those forms, 2nd person and 3rd person animate remain distinguished in the singular, but are syncretized in the plural, and number remains distinguished in all personsThe optative forms have a different pattern of syncretism:In the affirmative, number is distinguished in all persons, while in the negative, the 2nd person lacks the number distinction. However, both also have syncretisms that cuts across person and number, with the endings -́quf and -q in the affirmative and -qre̜ste̜ in the negativeThe same 2nd/3rd animate plural merging could also happen here as well by analogy, which would also be motivated for the negative, so that -glef and -qre̜ste̜ would be 2nd plural and 3rd animate pluralBut maybe even further, the pattern of 2nd/3rd animate syncretism that would exist in the present/imperfect affirmative could be extended to all of these forms, the question then being whether the 2nd person or 3rd animate would be kept. This would effectively convert the person system into 1st vs non-1st, with non-1st being further subdivided into animate and inanimate. I kinda like the idea of such a system. I’d actually played with the idea previously, but in that case, the idea was a development similar to several European languages where a 3rd person form was adopted as a polite 2nd person pronoun (e.g., Spanish usted or Portuguese você), replacing the original 2nd person entirely. If I go this route, it would have the same end result of no 2nd/3rd person distinction, but some of the endings would derive from the original 2nd person forms The major argument against such a restructuring would be that the sound changes that created the loss of number distinctions is relatively recent. For example, the present/imperfect affirmative forms previously had a syncretism between 2nd person singular and 3rd person animate plural, but the animate singular remained distinct, and only merged with the other two recently. And while a 2nd singular/3rd animate plural syncretism is a bit odd, it would have very little chance of ambiguity, so that there’d wouldn’t be much pressure to restructure it. So, even if it did happen after those sound changes, there would probably not have been enough time for it to spread beyond the immediately-motivated changes But also, even before those changes that merged singular and plural, they were already similar. The distinction between 3rd animate singular and plural in the present/imperfect observational, for example, was just vowel nasalization, so there could still have been a weaker motivation to extend the 2nd person plural to the 3rd animate plural. And changes to inflectional paradigms don’t always have to be motivated by phonetic considerations anyways -- source link