phrase (xxvii).

(xxvi) /pya-ą/ `robin’ bird-small (xxvii)  /pya   ą/ `a small bird’ (xxvi) can be qualified by /dra/  `big’. (xxviii) /pķya-ą dra/ `big robin’

Such a modification would be paradoxical and ungrammatical when applied to (xxvii), i.e., example (xxix) is unacceptable.

(xxix) /pyadra ą/ `a small big bird’

Inflexion - Outer Structure of Nouns :

The stems described in the preceding section may, in turn, be modified by suffixation to produce inflected forms adding to the stems, notions of gender, number, person, and case without basically modifying their semantic content.

Gender :

The gender distinction in Mishmi is natural. That is, all the male beings come under the masculine and all the female beings come under the feminine. The basic gender distinction is between nouns referring to animate and inanimate beings. All inanimate things fall under the neuter gender. Some of the animate beings are not distinguished for gender and hence fall under common gender. The rest of the nouns are  distinguished for humanness, i.e., human and non-human with a masculine distinction for both. The non-human masculine markers are distinct for birds and animals. The non-human feminine nouns are distinguished for fertility, i.e., the ability to produce offspring/lay eggs giving a three-way distinction, viz., pre-reproductive, reproductive and post-reproductive. The gender distinctions are shown in

A.

image

The grammatical representation of various