Powhatan/Grammar

Grammar Outlines Grammar Outline: --- I Morphosyntax A Direct 1 Verbs with 1st or 2nd person subjects and third person objects are direct and are marked with a suffix B Inverse 1 Verbs with 3rd person subjects and 1st or 2nd person objects are inverse and are marked with a suffix C Negation 1 The Powhatan negative prefix “MaTa” has several forms which are in complementary distribution II Morphology A Noun Inflection (Powhatan has extensive verbal and nominal morphology) 1 Gender a Nouns are divided into two different genders; animate and inanimate. This comes into play with pluralization and possession 2 Number a There are two number distinctions; singular and plural 3 Obviation a When 2 or more animate nouns occur within a sentence and are not conjoined, the focus or proximate noun is inflected for major 3rd person. The remaining nouns are inflected for minor 3rd person 4 Possession a Possessed nouns are inflected for person and number b Possessive prefixes can be used with almost any noun in Mattaponi c Certain nouns (including most body parts and kinship terms, and some words for personal objects like clothing) have inalienable possession. That means you must use a possessive prefix with one of those words. For these words, the possessive pronouns are slightly different. The pronouns are nih-, kih-, o-, and mih- before a root noun that begins with a consonant, and n-, k-, w-, and m- before a root noun that begins with a vowel. d When animate words use the third person form ("his or her"), there is not only a prefix (o- or w-) but also a suffix (-an) at the end of the word. This is not true for inanimate words. B Verb Inflection (There are 4 Powhatan verb categories: Inanimate Intransitive (II), Animate Intransitive (AI), Transitive Inanimate (TI), and Transitive Animate (TA)) 1 Intransitive Verbs a Agree with the gender of their subjects 2 Transitive Verbs a Agree with the number of their inanimate objects. If the subject noun is not present then the verb also has inflection for the number of the subject. Transitive Animate Verbs 1 Agree with the number of both their subjects and their objects which are animate III Syntax A Syllable Stress 1 syllables alternate in stress from light to heavy 2 if the 1st vowel is weak (uh or e) then even syllables are light, otherwise odd syllables are light B Word Order 1 Mattaponi's word order is primarily SUBJECT VERB OBJECT (SVO), but there are exceptions C Topicalization 1 This is a property of Powhatan syntax which is achieved by adding an independent pronoun D Questions 1 Yes/No a The use of non-affirmative endings alone or in addition to an interrogative prefix. 2 Content / WH-word Questions a Questioned elements are moved to the beginning of the sentence