User:Soap/MRCA

This is a scratchpad for the MRCA. The orthography is different here for ease of searching. Most notably, tone markers are dropped because there are no monosyllabic low tones at this stage and the tone of longer words can be predicted from its consonant layout.

PRONUNCIATION NOTES

Most coda consonants are silent:

1. All non-nasals are silent except before a vowel (liaison);
2. All nasals are silent before non-voiceless stops except in the DRM dialect;
3. All consonants are silent in the Tapilula branch except /mb nd mf/ etc which always load onto the trailing syllable.

Grammatical morphemes

09:20, 29 September 2023 (PDT)

• pum "if ....."

• man not; negative (used as suffix in Lava Bed, but have been prefixed earlier)

• pal XOR; exclusive OR

• nə ".... then ....." (never occurs by itself)

• From ther verb for walk. Can be seen as "therefore"

• -ni locative suffix

• This can also be analyzed as accusative -n followed by a standalone verb /i/, assuming other inherited traits hold. Despite ending in /i/ it is not cognate with most other /i/

• -n oblique suffix (genitive)

• ??? accusative marker

• Possibly for patients only (secundative alignment), as in Lava Bed languages. This would have consequences for word order

• ta genitive standalone word (appears before noun)

• ŋa verb of preparation (know ---> ask; eat ---> cook)
  • ŋa lo "if ....."

• -i- past tense infix
• nda past tense marker (coexisted with /i/)

• gu plural (goes before noun)

• possibly originally /gup/

Bound verbs

• pə fail to
  • pə pal try to; attempt (/pal/ = OR)
• hu should, must (expanded to /mbihu/ with /mbi/ as a carrier verb)
• mu ~ mbu capable of; able to; habilitative; prone to [used for the AGENT]
• twomo in the state resulting from; [used for the PATIENT; pairs with /ŋa/-type verbs]