Old Desani nominal quirks
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Animacy and possesion distinction
This public article was written by [Deactivated User], and last updated on 5 Mar 2021, 11:29.
[comments] rsdgrammar
?FYI...
This article is a work in progress! Check back later in case any changes have occurred.
This article is a work in progress! Check back later in case any changes have occurred.
The first attested language of its family, Old Desani was spoken in ancient times by nomadic tribes inhabiting the lands of modern day Kasewaya. Together with the Pori language, which went extinct in late antiquity and remains poorly attested, it derives from a common hypothetical proto-language, Proto-Desanian. It is very likely Pori was once a prestigious language of nobility and royal people of an ancient empire located in western Dawera (hence the name Pori, meaning “master” or “noble” in Old Desani), when Old Desani was considered a language of common, uneducated people.
Around the 10th century, soon after the Pori empire collapsed, Old Desani started spreading to neighboring territories and splitted into two grammatically and phonologically distinct varieties, Southern and Northern Desanian.
Therefore, Old Desani is the ancestor of all modern Desanian languages: Kasewayan, Keranian and Saritani. It also had a quite big impact on unrelated, geographically close languages, such as Northern Tazuro.
This short article is about animacy and possession distinctions in Old Desani, which probably are the most interesting feature in its rather uncomplicated grammar.
#1: Animate nouns
According to the traditional Desanian animistic religion, everything which can move and/or grow up on its own, is "alive". This includes:
• supernatural beings, like deities and spirits
• humans
• animals of all kinds
• plants
• elements and natural phenomena, like fire, water, light, clouds, lightnings, rain, and so on
Animate nouns are further divided into another two groups: sentient beings and everything else. The only thing which differs them are personal pronouns, ele for the first group and mani for the latter.
#2: Inanimate nouns
This is a bit more complicated, but one can say these include things which don't move unless something else "helps" them, or are completely immovable.
• Earth as a planet where all those beings exist (the exact name of the planet isn't Earth, but let's call it so)
• all celestial bodies, as they were believed to be moved by supernatural beings
• immovable elements of the landscape, eg. mountains
• body parts and bodily liquids - therefore water is animate, but blood is not
• abstract nouns (eg. love, hatred, freedom, happiness, etc.) and colors
• rocks, fallen branches, materials (eg. sand, clay), fruits and vegetables
• zelo-te, which translates to things made by human – tools, clothes, buildings, et cetera
The line between these two groups is somewhat liquid. For example, if some legend featured a magical stone which can move on its own, the word xepasi meaning ‘stone’ would be counted as animate, even though usually it's not.
Also, an inanimate noun, if treated as animate, could be understood as a proper name of some guardian deity or spirit of a certain thing.
Old Desani language clearly separates the verb teyahi-, meaning ‘to have in one's possession’ from ahi-, which is a more generic term for having, for example, a quality, a body part or a family member. Let's explain it using some simple sentences:
da râla tole reze teyahi-ima
leta de ele reze te hi-ile
DEMDemonstrative
e.g. this/ that man two house own-3SAThird person singular animate (person)
he/she/etc, not it ‖ DEMDemonstrative
e.g. this/ that of 3SThird person singular (person)
neither speaker nor addressee house PLPlural (number)
more than one/few be-3PIThird person inanimate plural (person)
those, these
This man has (owns) two houses. These are his houses.
dezare zirâ ta âsi lona ahi-ira
leta de rata zima te hi-ila
three brother and one sister have-1PEFirst person plural exclusive (person)
we (exclusive) ‖ 3PAThird person plural animate (person)
they of 1PEFirst person plural exclusive (person)
we (exclusive) sibling PLPlural (number)
more than one/few be-3PAThird person plural animate (person)
they
We (excl.) have three brothers and one sister. They are our siblings.
ane xele-ga bi giri-ika hi-ime
3SIThird person singular inanimate (person)
it land-RELZRelativiser (derivation) in live-1SFirst person singular (person)
speaker, signer, etc.; I be-3SIThird person singular inanimate (person)
it
This is the land I live in.
As you can see, the noun reze ‘house’ is used with the verb teyahi-, but the words for family members – with ahi- (this applies also to words like ‘friend’, ‘enemy’, ‘companion’ etc).
Xele is nonpossessible, it cannot be used with any of these two verbs. The only way to say ‘my land’ is to say ‘the land I live in’ or something similar.
So, the nonpossessible nouns include:
• proper nouns
• words like "human", "man", "woman"
• wild animals and plants
• natural phenomena and materials
• some abstract nouns
Treating nonpossessible nouns as possessible is a purely grammatical mistake in most cases, anyway sometimes it would be understood as an insult – especially with proper nouns like names.
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