Nominal Morphology

Nominal Morphology

Nouns can be divided into patterns (classes/genders?).

Gloss	Noun (sg.)	Sg. article	Noun (pl.)	Pl. article	generalizations for membership
Woman	o-tɛʋ	oχɛ	0-rɛʋ	ʋɛ	humans only
Gorilla	a-kooŋg	alɛ	a-kooŋg	akɛ
Elephant	0-faɲiik	fɛ	a-paɲiik	akɛ
Elephant			0-paɲiik	kɛ
Lake	a-mbɛɛl	alɛ	0-pɛɛl	kɛ
Bull	0-ɴɢooχ	nɛ	0-qooχ	kɛ
Turtle	0-xomb	lɛ	a-qomb	akɛ
Butterfly	o-fiiɗ	olɛ	xa-piiɗ	axɛ
Cat	0-muus	nɛ	0-muus	kɛ
Leg	o-ɟaf	olɛ	a-caf	akɛ
Woman (AUG)	ga-ndɛʋ	alɛ	ga-ndɛʋ	akɛ	entirely and only augmentative-marked
Woman (DIM)	o-ndɛʋ	oŋgɛ	fo-ndɛʋ	akɛ/nɛ	entirely and only diminutive-marked

Negation of a noun is indicated by the free morphology word [ɟɛgɛ]. It's unclear if this element can function verbally or if it can only negate nouns.

Diminutives

Gloss	Singular Noun	Diminutive of SN	Plural Noun	Diminutive of PN	Notes
drum	famb	ombamb oŋga	apamb		distal "article" oŋga
field	qool	oɴɢool oŋga			distal "article" oŋga
sugar	suukar	ɲɟuukar	suukar		did not elicit dim. of pl.

Augmentatives

Gloss	Singular Noun	Augmentative of SN	Plural Noun	Augmentative of PN	Notes
cat	muus	gamuusala

Word/clitic status of "articles"

The "articles" discussed above are apparently not suffixal, as one might assume, making them either independent (and mobile) words or clitics (which attach to the right edge of a DP?).

For instance, note that the agreement for the article in haˈƥɛk ˈsuuˌkaraˌhɛ 'the pieces of sugar (sugarcubes)' matches that of haˈƥɛkaˌhɛ 'the pieces', rather than the agreement seen in ˈsuuˌkarfɛ 'the sugar': the article agrees with haˈƥɛk despite not being immediately adjacent to it.

It is also unclear at this point precisely what semantic function they serve. Some specifying and/or deictic function seems to be involved.

Stem-initial segment mutation

See also Inflectional Verbal Morphology for similar processes in verb stems.

Nouns of certain noun classes exhibit a stem-initial segment alternation between their singular and plural forms that runs on two parallel "tracks". Only initial consonants that can mutate actually do mutate; some never appear to mutate (e.g. /j/, /m/, /n/).

The non-implosive "track":

• (sg) continuants --> (pl) voiceless oral stop, non-implosive
• (sg) prenasalized stop --> (pl) voiceless oral stop, non-implosive
• (sg) voiced stop --> (pl) voiceless oral stop, non-implosive

The implosive "track":

• (sg) voiced implosive stop --> (pl) voiceless implosive stop

The human noun class presents a major exception to this pattern, and a very unusual one at that: the "tracks" still apply, but in reverse. Nearly all attested mutations hold to this pattern, but there is no evidence yet for the expected alternation: (sg) voiceless stop --> (pl) prenasalized stop.

Reversed non-implosive "track" for the human class:

• (sg) non-continuants --> (pl) continuants.
• [hypothetical: (sg) voiceless stop --> (pl) prenasalized stop]
• (sg) voiceless oral stop, non-implosive --> (pl) voiced oral stop, non-implosive

Reversed implosive "track" for the human class:

• (sg) voiceless implosive stop --> (pl) voiced implosive stop

Diminutives/augmentatives (here "affectives") also exhibit initial segment mutations relative to the non-affective noun category. Further generalizations await.