| since
it behave as a single unit. This compounding, incidentally, also has
take morpho-phonemic change. |
| However,
there may be a number of occasions where examples like/ nimin/have
been referred to as ‘words’ or even the word like ‘suffixed’
has been used in place of ‘juxtaposed’ and so on. In such
cases only the familiarity with the terms has been the main reason
to have been employed than technicality. Therefore, reference to word
would mean a root or a plus one or more affixes or even juxtaposed
postpositions as well as a free like a particle. |
| 2.1.
Substantives: Such root words which take genetive suffixes and postpositions
are substantives. Substantives are three-animate nouns, inanimate
nouns and personal pronouns. |
| 2.1.1. Animate nouns:
In addition to the genetive affixes and postpositions, they also take
suffixes for dual and plural, /kiN/
and /ko/ respectively, and are marked by them in the verbal phrase
in case of third person subject or object. |
2.1.2. Inanimate
nouns: They differ from the animate in the way that the inanimates
do not generally take suffixes for number and are marked in the verbal
phrase. Exceptionally, when the duality or plurality is to be emphasized
upon, e.g., /o a?/ ‘house’ /ora?-ki/
‘two houses’ or when objects are enumerated, e.g., /bulu ko/, sunumko/, /cauliko/, i.e., salt, oil, rice etc., they
may take such suffixes. |
| 2.1.3. Personal pronouns:
The personal pronouns differ from the other two by not occurring as
a subject, apart from being marked in the verbal phrase. However,
when pronominal subject i semphasized it can occur independently with
free-form marker /a/ as prefix and emphasis marker /ge/ as suffix.
Pronouns denoting theinanimates do not have dual and plural. The forms
of personal pronouns are tabulated below: |
|
Sg.
|
du.
|
pl.
|
1. ai
|
alaN
(incl.)
|
abu
(incl.)
|
|
|
ali (excl.)
|
ale
(excle.)
|
|
2.
am
|
aben
|
ape
|
|
3. ae
|
aki
|
ako
|
|
|
| The formation of
all the personal pronouns is made by prefixing a non-personal /a-/,
which is a free-form marker. The rest part of each form is used as
a subject or object as the case may be. |
| The other function
of the contracted forms is to denote possession, e.g., setaiko
‘my dogs’. This type of construction without a genetive
suffix is generally used for denoting kinship, otherwise: apuma? o·a?
‘your father’s house’, where a? is a genetive suffix. |
| 2.1.4. Derivations:
All the nouns can again be differetiated by being either action noun
or non-action noun. Action noun are connected with an action and are
adopted from the verb roots, e.g., hasu ‘pain or to pain’,
rakab ‘ a climb or to climb’ , kuli ‘question or to
put question’. The non-action nouns are imply the names of anything.
All the action nouns are inanimate and do not take number suffixes.
They are the substitutes for infinitives. |
There are three
chief morphological processes for derivation of nouns: suffixation,
infixation and
compounding - |
| (i) Suffixation
- |
(a) a? is
suffixed to adjective roots to denote a thing with that quality, e.g.,
pun·i ‘white
>pun·ia?
‘
a white thing’. |
| (b) ea? suffixed
to a verb root for nominalization, e.g., her /to sow > hera? ‘that
which is sown’; jom ‘to eat’ > jomea? ‘eatable’. |
| The formation of
ea? is by suffixing genetive /a?/to/e/, possibly relative participal
marker. |
| Simply a? can be
added even to participal stems, as / olked/ ‘having written’,
making it/ olkeda?/ ‘that, which some one has written’. |
