Knox Scratchpad

[Knox Adjacent]

Up to 3 applicatives, forms decided. Only the 3rd one is semantically done (yul̪u- for privation).

List to come later, I decided I'm really gonna like instrumental prefixes.

There is a 2nd category of tense: daytime vs nighttime. Prefixal and optional.
yana- daytime
yuta- nighttime
(The postpositional origin of applicative -ta- might be reflected here, maybe)

yaɭu kuŋcuŋciyutakurʈumpara
yaɭu kuŋ-yu-ŋ-ci-yuta-kur-ɻu-mpa-ra
NEG 1Erg-3Tool-Erg.Sg/Abs.Sg-REFL-night-pull-CAUS-Desid-PRS
"I don't like to drive at night"

[Knox Adjacent]

Adpositions:
There's a class of adpositions. Each one bears an agreement prefix to their head noun/pronoun. Adpositions don't form close phrases with those and may freely be separated by unrelated constituents for pragmatic reasons. (yural̪u yuʈaɳupu mapura can have all 3 words in any order based on if it's the location, the direction or the action that's important)
Following that, there need not be an explicit head nominal anyway. (Say, you're just clarifying if you're going with him or with her)

-ru allative/purposive
-riŋki ablative/causal/material
-riŋkiɻka aversive
-pu locative/instrumental
-kami comitative/temporal
-ŋinti privative
-puɻka perlative
-ŋiʎi terminative (construction X -ŋiʎi Y -ŋiʎi "from X to Y" lit. "until X (or) until Y)
-ran̪a semblative
-lanta substitutive

-n̪appu above; over; atop; about (topic) "(head-LOC")
-mimapu below; beneath; under ("foot-LOC")
-cayukpu inside ("stomach-LOC")
-muŋpu outside ("skin-LOC")
-yawunpu in front of ("face-LOC")
-ralki in the middle of; among; between
-ʈaɳupu behind ("back-LOC")

At the last minute I decided on replacing the less basic ones with those based on body part nouns and -pu. Ah well.

[Knox Adjacent]

Copula clauses:
So, there's no copula verb. These are nonverbal. Juxtaposition is key here.

Identity (A=B) (Noun1 Noun2)
ma-ki-mumu ma-caŋik
M-1-son M-doctor
"My son's a doctor"

Attribution (Noun Adjective)
ma-ki-mumu ma-mima-makutu
M-1-son M-leg-itchy
"My son's restless"

Location (Noun Locative.Complement)
ma-ki-mumu yu-ki-ta-ral̪u yu-pu
M-1-son TOOL-1-AL-house TOOL-LOC
"My son's home with me"

Dummy verbs for tense aren't needed; just add a temporal adverb like "now" as needed. (Yes, these tend to be enclitic to complements.) Again, "become"/"turn into" are covered by the incohoative verbalizer suffix -yu

[Knox Adjacent]

So on to adjectives.
Adjectives are easy-peasy, lemon-Stevey. They basically just take a noun class prefix agreeing with their head noun. The prefixes are the same as their nominal referents'.

Adjectives may be used with zero-derivation as nouns. But! That results in in nouns with a concrete meaning as in a noun embodying that trait like "(the) red one". It doesn't ever result in nouns depicting abstract states like "redness"; that requires an overt abstract noun like <wi-piwal>.

Degree marking is morphological!
Reduced intensity is <ADJ-ṉampi> ("ADJ-thin")
Very adjective is full reduplication
Sufficiently adjective is <ADJ-piṛak> ("ADJ-good")
Excessively adjective is <ADJ-miyar>

Easy ways to tell nouns and adjectives apart:

• only nouns take possessive prefixes (who talks about "their redness" or even "their red ones"?)

• only adjectives take degree modification (I guess bar zero-derived nouns from adjectives.)

Adjectives aren't a marginal part of speech and there's many of them. My favorite is -ṉuwaŋ "sliced flat and fried".

[DV82LECM]

Verbal number marking.

There's three relevant prefix slots for core argument marking: An outermost ergative person/gender marker (for transitive verbs), an absolutive person/gender marker and lastly a marker encoding number of both ergative and absolutive.

Code: Select all

Intransitive
ABS Sg -∅-
ABS Du -nan-
AbS PL -ni-

Transitive
       Erg Sg Erg Du Erg Pl
ABS Sg -ŋ-    -rurku- -m-
ABS Du -ŋan-  -ca-    -l̪an-
ABS Pl -ŋi-   -ya-    -t-

EG.
kuŋ-[ʈ]a-t-nari-ca
1.Erg-3ANIM.ABS-Erg>ABS.PL-hit-PST
We hit them critters.

I assume the number marker is the result of a badly eroded agreement system repaired with new person markers in front, egative singulars I imagine are the result of simplification of *ŋ-nV clusters, and -l̪an is a remodeled *-lun after the independent numeral -mal̪an.

Really hope the table shows up for you as well as me.

Well, you did make a similar system. I just stumbled upon it. I think your language is just a tad bit better than mine. Good work.