Incidentally, these sets of
words are recent borrowings from Hindi which has a grammatical
gender. In addition, some of these also have alternative forms without
any overt gender marker which are of high frequency, for instance, suali ‘girl’ lora ‘boy’ kukura ‘cock’ etc. And in the absence of any
concord in the gender of the noun with any other grammatical class
including the verb in a sentence, the speakers of this language
perceive these few pairs of nouns not as part of a grammatical system
of gender, rather as separate lexical itesm. A vast majority of the
nouns including the kinship terms in this language do not take any
gender markder, for e.g.,
|
| puali |
‘daughter’ |
| suali |
‘girl’ |
| kokay |
‘elder brother’ |
| didi |
‘elder sister’ |
| bo |
‘elder brother’s wife’ |
| makela |
‘girl’s dothi’ etc. |
|
It was mentioned earlier that
a noun can be diffentiated from the pronouns only on the syntagmatic
axis. On this axis, while any noun can be expanded to form a noun
phrase, a pronoun cannot.
|
A noun in this language can
be formally defined as belonging to that grammatical class which on
the paradigmatic axis is capable of showing opposition in case and
number but ont in person or tense and on the syntagmatic axis
functions as the nucleus of a noun phrase.
|
(b) Pronouns :
|
A pronoun in this language is
capable of showing opposition in person (though not by inflection),
number and case, as in :
|
| moy ‘I’ |
muke ‘to me’ |
moykhan |
‘we moykhanke
‘to us’ |
 puni ‘you’ |
|
punikhan |
‘you (pl)’ |
| tay ‘he/she’ |
|
taykhan |
‘they (human’ |
| itu/heytu ‘it’ etc.
|
|
|
|
|
Unlike the nouns, the
pronouns cannot be expanded to form a pronominal phrase except a
co-ordinate one, but the pronouns have an anaphoric function, in that
they substitute for a noun including a noun phrase, as in :
|
otu doni suali jayse; tay nhibo
‘that beautiful girl went, she will not come’
|
A pronoun can now be defined
formally as belonging to that class which is capable of showing
opposition in person, number and case and is capable of replacing a
noun including a noun phrase having an anaphoric reference.
|
(c) Numerals :
|
A numeral in this language is
capable of taking the ordinal suffix and post positions showing case
relationships and also definite articles, as in:
|
| ek |
‘one’ |
poyla |
‘first’ |
| duy |
‘two’ |
duytor |
‘second’ |
| tini |
‘three’ |
trityor |
‘third’ |
| duy pora |
‘from two’ |
tintu |
‘the three’ etc. |
|
On the syntagamatic axis, a
numeral fills in the slot of a noun as well as an adjective, as in:
|
| tukri pora
tini am muk dibi ‘give me three
mangoes from the basket’ |
| 1
2 3 4
5 6 6
5 3
4 2
1 |
| tini suali/suali
tini ‘three girls’ |
| 1
2
1 2 |
| tini doni suali ‘three
beautiful girls’ etc. |
| 1 2
3 1
2 3 |
A numeral in this language
can now be formally defined as belonging to that grammatical class
which on the paradigmatic axis is capable of taking ordinal suffixes
but incapable of taking number or tense markers and on the syntagmatic
axis is capable of forming constructions with post positions and
either fills in the slots of a noun or functions as a satellite (i.e.,
a modifier) of a noun phrase.
|
Verbs :
|
On the paradigmatic axis, a
verb in this language is inflected for tense and modals, a feature not
available with any other grammatical category in this language, as in:
|
| moy |
jayse |
‘I went’ |
tay jayse |
‘he/she went’ |
| moy |
jabo |
‘I will go’ |
puni
jabo |
‘you will go’ |
| jabole |
|
‘to go’ |
jabi |
‘go (imp)’ |
| jayle |
|
‘if..goes’ etc. |
|
|
|
On the syntagmatic axis, a
verb functions as the nucleus of a verb phrase, as in:
|
| joldi jayse |
‘went quickly’ |
| etom joldi jayse |
‘went very quickly’
etc. |
|
A verb in this language can
now be formally defined as that grammatical class which on the
paradigmatic axis is capable of showing opposition in tense and modals
but not in case, number or person and on the systematic axis
functions as the nucleus of a verb phrase.
|
