Thank you for interesting video lectures. My questions are related to postpositions.
1. You mentioned locative adverbs that function as postpositions. Are there postpositions themselves as a class?
2. Talking about locative adverbs, are there any language changes happening in this category? Are they getting more postposition-like? Are there any cases in which native Dargwa speakers omit inflections?
Dear NinaMy first question is in regards to the number of verbal roots. Can verbs be called a closed class in Dargwa? What kind of semantics fields do verbs occupy, are they generally very specific or are they mostly rather generic bleached verbs like "to do" "to make" and such. How does the number of verbal roots compare to other NEC languages? Was there a general loss of verbal roots from PNEC or was the number of verbs in the protolanguage already quite low and those are the ones which are inherited into Dargwa and other daughter languages? Then I have a question regarding the case system. What is the history of the direct-oblique stem system? I have seen similar systems with languages like Tocharian or Ket, where it is likely a grammaticalisation of postpositions and the oblique stem being the remnant of agreement between the PP and the noun.Lastly I also have two minor questions. What are the words Abbas and Shahi, you mention them in your examples, but leave them untranslated. Are those personal names, titles or something else?
What goes on with the word adam "person" is it a loanword from Arabic or Turkish? I wonder because of the change adam > admi, whether this a process of Dargwa. Does it have to do something with the change from direct to oblique stems?Thanks
Nina mentioned twice they are coins, I am guessing named after the rulers they featured. Which makes sense in the examples INTRODUCTION p 22 or GENDER p. 7.
Other sentences are confusing since they reference births and deaths. At first I was puzzled by the non human agreement in the example on GENDER p. 13 (your abbas is dead), since I assumed Abbas was a person in that example, but I am guessing it is still a coin and it is being anthropomorphised, as in the example INTRODUCTION p. 13 (your abbas gave birth to a shahi), a shahi being worth a quarter abbasi (from what I gather from a quick search).
Dear professor Sumbatova,
Thank you for interesting video lectures. My questions are related to postpositions.
1. You mentioned locative adverbs that function as postpositions. Are there postpositions themselves as a class?
2. Talking about locative adverbs, are there any language changes happening in this category? Are they getting more postposition-like? Are there any cases in which native Dargwa speakers omit inflections?
Dear Nina My first question is in regards to the number of verbal roots. Can verbs be called a closed class in Dargwa? What kind of semantics fields do verbs occupy, are they generally very specific or are they mostly rather generic bleached verbs like "to do" "to make" and such. How does the number of verbal roots compare to other NEC languages? Was there a general loss of verbal roots from PNEC or was the number of verbs in the protolanguage already quite low and those are the ones which are inherited into Dargwa and other daughter languages? Then I have a question regarding the case system. What is the history of the direct-oblique stem system? I have seen similar systems with languages like Tocharian or Ket, where it is likely a grammaticalisation of postpositions and the oblique stem being the remnant of agreement between the PP and the noun. Lastly I also have two minor questions. What are the words Abbas and Shahi, you mention them in your examples, but leave them untranslated. Are those personal names, titles or something else?
What goes on with the word adam "person" is it a loanword from Arabic or Turkish? I wonder because of the change adam > admi, whether this a process of Dargwa. Does it have to do something with the change from direct to oblique stems? Thanks