12b. Noun Class: Agreement and Agency Stuff
Remember that time I said that noun class wasn't very important? Well, turns out it's quite freaking important.
Noun class is important for adjectives, stative verbs, and transitive verbs. Adjectives and stative verbs function quite similarly (in fact, they zero-derive each other):
məstəg:u gʷas
msdq-gʷ gʷəs
wily-R man
"a wily man"
Gʷas məstəg:u.
gʷəs msdq-gʷ
man wily-R
"A man is wily."
dəqt dəstu
dq-d dsdʷ
quick-C reindeer
"a quick reindeer"
bu: pəs
bʷə-ʕ ps
good-A hunt
"a good hunt"
There's a more to stative verbs and adjectives, of course, but that's for a different post. Transitive verbs are the most interesting phenomenon when it comes to noun class.
Basically, transitive verbs encode the noun class of the patient in the transitive marker (if there is one), so the three transitive markers corresponding to the three noun classes are TR.R (rational) /gʷ/, TR.C (concrete) /d/, and TR.A (abstract) /ʕ/. Additionally, transitive verbs are divided into two classes: the agency-compromising class (AC-class) and the non-agency-compromising-class (NAC-class). This is mainly a semantic difference: AC-class verbs are those that affect the agency of the patient or its existential integrity. Verbs like "kill", "destroy", "eat", "steal", "build", "paint", and all causative verbs are all in the AC-class. Verbs like "look at", "cover" and "wear" are all NAC-class verbs.
The difference between these two classes manifests itself in how different patients get assigned different classes depending on the verb: when a noun is the patient of a NAC-class verb, the noun class agreement on that verb is perfectly aligned with its noun class.
Kəs dəlx qəlgu!
ks dlx ql-gʷ
1.3 today see-
TR.R
"I saw him/her today!" (object is a human being, therefore rational)
Manx bəs stankəd səq dəstʷa.
mənx bs sd<ən>k-d s-q dsdʷ-ə
snow INC wear_on_head<DIM>-
TR.C 3-TOP reindeer-POSS
"His reindeer got a snowflake on its head." (object is a snowflake, therefore concrete)
Kə qəl: dəstuq sə ŋa:nəps.
k ql-ʕ dsdʷ-q s ŋ<ən>-ps
1 see-
TR.A reindeer-TOP POSS eat<DIM>-VBN
"I saw the reindeer eat; I thought it was very cute." (object is the reindeer's action of eating, therefore abstract)
However, when a noun is the patient of an AC-class verb, the noun class agreement moves down one class from the actual one; in other words, the first/rational class is agreed with the second class, the second/concrete class is agreed with the third class, and the third/abstract class stays the third class. Where NAC-class verbs’ transitive suffixes were glossed with “TR” followed by the first letter of the corresponding noun class, AC-class verbs’ transitive suffixes are glossed with “TR” followed by the capital first letter of the actual noun class, which is then followed by the minuscule first letter of the noun class that appears on the surface. For the sake of consistency, even though abstract nouns don’t change class, they are glossed with the aforementioned system to show that the verb is an AC-class verb.
Gʷasa: ŋad daŋko:.
gʷəs-ə ŋ<ə>-d dəŋkəʕ
man-POSS eat<PL>-
TR.Rc wolf.PL
"Wolves ate my husband." (object is a human being, therefore rational, with its agency reduced to concrete)
Dəstu ŋoəʔ dɨŋko:.
dsdʷ ŋ-ʕ dŋkəʕ
reindeer eat-
TR.Ca wolf
"The wolf ate the reindeer." (object is a reindeer, therefore concrete, with its agency reduced to abstract)
Kəq loəʔ səs.
k-q l-ʕ s-s
1-TOP do.NEG.
TR.Aa 3-DIST
"I do that." (object is a pronoun referring to an action, therefore abstract, with its agency remaining unchanged)
In summary, the transitive morphemes with the noun classes of objects encoded can be summarized in a table as seen below:
The transitive suffix is the only one in the verbal paradigm that fully agrees with all three possible noun classes. As an extreme example, the causative suffix, which forms either transitive or ditransitive verbs, remains unchanged, no matter what the patient is:
Səq kəbu kə.
s-q k-bʷ k
3-TOP come-CAUS 1
“He made me come to him.”
Qə naja: sə pəsub θnəθnək.
q nəj-ə s ps-bʷ nəj-ə xnxn-k
TOP mother-POSS 3 fall-CAUS knife-PROX
“[My] mother dropped the knife [that she was holding].”
Similarly, applicative suffixes (which exist in the same slot as the other valency-shifting suffixes), agree with the rational and concrete classes by adding /ʷs/ to the morpheme (the labialization of which does not surface if the immediately preceding consosnant is not one of the phonemically labializable ones, or if the immediately preceding consonant is already labialized), and with the abstract class by staying unchanged.
Kə bədus gʷandu.
k b-dʷs gʷəndʷ
1 sit-LOC.APPL.C room
“I sat myself in the room.”
Kəs iləls.
ks j-lls
1 go_on_foot-GOAL.APPL.R
“I followed him [there].”
Kə iθləl sa:m kəps.
k jx-ll səm k-ps
1 NEG.go_on_foot-GOAL.APPL.A head come-VBN
“I didn’t follow through with that idea.”
One last thing: when the verb is in an irrealis mood (or is negative), it always counts as an NAC-class transitive verb – the logic behind that is that the action hasn't really happened yet, so the agency of the object couldn't have been compromised. Compare the first following sentence with the second one.
Kəs ŋoəʔ.
/ks ŋ-ʕ/
1.3o eat_meal-TR.Ca
"I ate it."
Kəs nə ŋəd.
/ks n ŋ-d/
1.3o DES eat_meal-TR.C
"I want to eat it."
