such pairs are recent
borrowings from Hindi which has a grammatical gender and further such
paired words co-occur with the original words like: lora ‘boy’ suali
‘girl’ etc. Secondly there is no concord in gender between the gender
of a noun and the other grammatical classes in a sentence. Lastly the
speakers themselves that these words on par with semantically paired
words like : ama ‘mother’ and apa ‘father’ which already exist in this
language. the pairs of words like : chokra : chokri
: ‘boy : girl’ etc. are therefore, considered monomorphemic words and
the gender is not set up even as an optional grammatical category.
|
2.1.3.
|
Case relations: |
Nine case
relations are set up in this language. These are : nominative,
accusative, dative, genitive, sociative, instrumental, locative,
allative and ablative. The justification for setting up of each of
these case relations and the markers selected follows:
|
| 1. |
Nominative
case : It is not marked overtly in any variety, though every
variety has the nominative case relation. It is unmarked in this
one also.
|
| 2. |
Accusative
case: The accusative and dative case markers got mixed up with
pronouns in most of the varieties. And only 7 out of the 17
varieties have an overt accusative case marker. In the informal
discourse situation, the absence of an overt accusative case
marker would not the absence of an overt accusative case marker
would not be felt much as the context would indicate the
case relationship. But when the language is to be put on a wider
usage including for writing, it is required to be set up for
identifying the direct object particularly in the passive
constructions. This can be illustrated with a few examples from
English which does not have overt marker for the accusative use.
|
| |
Shyama saw
Sonia
I ate meat
Sonia was seen by Shyama
Meat was eaten (by me)
|
|
Though passive
constructions are a regular feature in English and many other
languages, it is not so in Naga languages. Even when a sentence in
active construction is passivized, only a change in the word order and
the taking of the focus marker by the logical object are the
operations involved. This can be illustrated with an example from Sema.
|
| ino axamnu xowe |
‘I plucked flower’ |
| 1 2 3
4 5 |
(I nom. suff. flower pluck past) |
| |
1 2
3 4 5 |
| axamnuye inot xowe |
‘the flower was plucked by me’ |
|
The logical
subject of the sentence in passive retains the nominative case suffix
while the logical object functioning as the grammatical subject takes
the focus marker ye. This is a much simpler system when compared to
the examples from English cited earlier. In English, basically it is
the change in the shape of the verb that signals the passivization
hence when the logical subject is deleted from a sentence in the
passive, the grammatical subject could still be recognized as the
logical object. Similarly in Sema and the other Naga languages the
presence or absence of the nominative suffix and the focus marker
would signal whether or not sentence is in the active or passive
construction. Neither of these devices are available for Naga Pidgin,
rather the only device available for it is a change in the word order,
as in :
|
| sonia syamak dikhse |
‘Sonia saw Shyama’ |
| syamak (sonia) dikhise |
‘Shyama was seen (by sonia)’ |
| kukur bilik katise |
‘the dog bit the cat’ |
| bilik kukur katise |
‘the cat was bitten by the dog’ |
moy mo se
khayse |
‘I ate meat’ |
| moso
(moy) khayse |
‘that meat was eaten (by me)’ |
| |
|
|
From the
illustrative examples cited above, it could be seen that if the
accusative is unmarked, it would not be possible to distinguish a
sentence in the passive from the active. Let us see whether any other
means that are available with the other languages could be made use of
in this case.
|
Some of the
means available are :
|
(i) nominative
case marker
(ii) accusative case marker
(iii) passive marker with the logical object
(iv) passive marker with the verb and
(v) change in the word order
|
| Items (iii) and
(iv) are not available with any of the varieties of this language nor
with the Naga languages. Item (v) is available and is made use of. It
was already seen that by using only that device, it would not be
possible to distinguish the two types of constructions. Since the
nominative is unmarked in all the varieties of constructions. Since
the nominative is unmarked in all the varieties studied, the only
option available to us is the setting up of the accusative case
marker. Since only nouns that have agentive functions would involve in
the passivization, and since Nanh being class has the agentive
function the accusative case need to be marked only for this sub-group
and the pronouns that substitute the NH class of nouns. The Nina class
of nouns and the other pronoun can be left unmarked for the
accusative. |
