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2.6.7.
The Indefinte Pronoun |
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The Indefinite pronouns in Angami are |
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(1) khpur
‘anybody ; everybody’ This is composed of ,
the Human marker and khpur |
This may also be used as a generic pronoun, the equivalent of
the English ‘one’ in sentences like ‘one should behave oneself’ |
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(2) humi
‘somebody’ composed of hu
‘some’ and (th)- mi
‘man’ |
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(3) mhhu
and mhpu
‘something’ composed respectively of mh
‘thing’, hu ‘some’ and
mh ‘thing’,
pu
‘one’ |
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(4) mhkhpur
‘anything’ composed of mh
‘thing’ and khpur |
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3.0.0.
Case Relationships |
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Case is a grammatical category, which expresses the
syntacticosemantic relations between a N(oun) and the Predicate.
Angami express ten such relations (excluding of course the
genitive) : |
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(1) Sbujective,
which has various semantic roles, |
(2) Executor, |
(3)
Communicative, |
(4) Unmarked
Obejctive, |
(5) Locative, |
(6) source, |
(7) Goal, |
(8)
Instrumental, |
(9) Benefactive
and |
(10)
Associative. |
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The Executor,
communicative and unmarked object case roles express what
syntactically is the D(irect) O(bject) or in traditional terms
the accusative case. |
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In Angami, the
morphemes that mark these relations are postpositions except for
which mark the
subject in its stylistic form. Only the First person and second
person singular pronouns
and n respectively
undergo morphophonemic changes when case markers are added as
mentioned in the section on Pronouns. The case markers will,
nevertheless, be considered postpositions on the basis of (a)
the absence of morphophonemic alternation |
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_____________ |
The only reason why the semantic roles of
the subject have been conflated under one case whereas the three
underlying roles of the DO have been given ‘emic’ status is that
case roles identified here may not be exhaustive and one can
possibly talk about the semantic roles of the subject ad
infinitum with no corroborating morphological or syntactic
evidence. |
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with
other NP’s, (b) the phonetic criterion of a potential morphemic
juncture between the marker and the NP, and (c) orthographic
conventions: all case markers are written with space between the
NP and the marker except for
which is written with a hyphen in between. |
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3.1.0 The subjective relates the subject of the sentence
to the predicate phrase and is generally unmarked. It has an
overt marker as an
output of a stylistic transformation of primary topicalization
as in |
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Pre-stylistic |
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(1) pu
punb
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‘sheis happy’ |
(2) rvz
thmi
kv
pu
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‘Ravizo(is) a goodman’ |
(3)
z
pltny
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‘Myname(is) Petetunuo’ |
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(Post) stylistic |
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(1a) pu
pun
b |
‘She is happy’ |
(2a) rvz
thmi
kv
pu |
‘Ravizo (is) a good man’ |
(3a)
z
pltny
|
‘My name (is) Peletunuo’ |
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3.1.1 The suface subject, then, is not obligatorily
marked. The discourse definition of ‘the thing being talked
about’ or ‘the topic of discourse’ will identify the subject. |
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3.1.2. The surface subject may have the following case or
semantic functions. |
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3.1.3. The Agent(ive) is the volitional, animate
instigator or doer of the action identified by the verb. This
typically is the subject of action verbs and action-process
verbs (For a definition of action verbs and action-process
verbs, see 6.1.0) |
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(4) (a) pu
ble
dkhrw
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‘HekilledBelho’ |
(b) tf
pu mkw
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‘The dogbithim’ |
(5) (a) w khti tsy
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‘Weeatrice’ |
(b)
d
pu
z
ks
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‘Imethimyeasterday’ |
(c) pu
thi
h
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‘Shesaw
metoday’ |
(d) k
tdi
ili
b
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‘Theyare learningAngami’ |
(e)
lsdpu
ktss
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‘Isent
abook’ |
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