Pronouns Examples:
Parts of speech Kwaza has four parts of speech:
particles,
verbs,
adverbs, and
nouns. No
adjectives occur in the language. In Kwaza, the majority of the bound grammatical morphemes are
suffixes. Kwaza is morphologically complex in its verbs. Word order is relatively free, but
SOV and
SVO are more dominant. In the language, it is mandatory to
inflect verbs to express mood and subject person. First and second person singular are distinguished by subject agreement marking, as are first person inclusive and exclusive, and the second persona plural. The third person is not pronounced. There is no difference between third person singular and plural, or between feminine and masculine.
Pro-drop Hein van der Voort (2000) categorizes Kwaza as a '
pro-drop' language because subject agreement is obligatory, while
pronominal reference is optional. Definite argument morphemes can agree with explicit lexical arguments, but overt pronouns have a contrastive effect by emphasizing them.
Verbs Verb morphology in Kwaza can express numerous moods. These moods include
exhortative,
interrogative,
declarative,
imperative, and negative. The imperative only happens with second person subjects. The second person singular usually has no expression. There are several verbal-final elements in Kwaza, which exist as
subordinate clause mood markers. In
adverbial clause construction, subordinate clause mood markers are used, for example in concessive and
conditional clauses. The same
object and
subject morphemes are used, while the third person is not expressed. There is also a
semantically abstract 'mood' marker used to connect clauses that are both
coordinated and subordinated.
Verb derivation Verbal derivation in Kwaza includes
valency and valency change, negation,
modality,
aspect, and
tense which are marked with various optional verbal morphemes. Some modality morphemes, according to van der Voort, could be grammatically related to mood markers. Verbs can be turned into adverbs or nouns through stem-final nominalizing morphemes. Kwaza has two subdivisions of derivational morphemes, directional and classifiers. While verb morphology in Kwaza is complex, nominal morphology is not. Kwaza has no gender or number inflection. Nouns can have animate object case marking. They can also have one of the oblique case markers:
beneficiary,
locative,
comitative, and
instrumental. Nouns are turned into verbs through attaching mood marking. As mentioned, Kwaza does not have adjectives.
Nouns and classifiers Attributive modification of nouns occurs by comparing them with other nouns. Kwaza also has many classifying morphemes that only 'agree' with specific nouns. Classifiers are used widely. They can be used in verb stems, attach to
bare nouns, and also modify adverbs. Classifiers are used in the position of nominalizers. Classifiers in Kwaza support van der Voorts statement of the language being pro-drop as they have functions similar to the functions of verbal agreement morphemes. These properties of classifiers rely heavily on the environment in which they are used, and according to van der Voort are not as dynamic as the properties of cross-reference morphemes. In complex nominalized clauses, specific classifiers cannot replace the nominalizer.
Morphological aspect In the Kwaza language, the morpheme is used to describe a grammatical number for words in contexts where a few of their referents are described or referred to, also known as paucal. In both nouns and verbs of Kwaza, the morpheme is associated with paucal number, but does not occur in word-final position, and is always followed by a nominaliser (formation of a noun from a verb or adjective). For example: It is also important to note that the paucal morpheme applies only to humans and animals in Kwaza. For example:
Negation In Kwaza, the morpheme is one of the
negation morphemes, which creates the negative in
predicates and propositions when bound together. In this negation morpheme, the negative usually comes before the person and mood marking. For example: However, if the clause in the sentence is declarative, and there is no clear argument cross-reference, the declarative mood marker is .
Reduplication Reduplication in the language is very common, and occurs in many contexts, some of which include lexical roots, constituent syllables of roots, verbal person inflections and other parts of morphemes. In Kwaza, reduplication can also represent a past tense construction, if the person cross-reference morpheme is reduplicated. This is particularly interesting since in the Kwaza language, there is zero specific marking of past and present. Whereas something involving pain in the present tense would take this form: In these examples, we see the reduplication of the first person singular, which in the language presents a first person past tense state. Another form of reduplication is root reduplication, which occurs with the repetition of the entire root which can occur with repetitive, progressive, durative and intensifying meaning which is attested both with verbal and adverbial roots. For example: There is also another way in the Kwaza language where reduplication occurs to intensify meaning. Repetition of a syllable of the lexical root may also occur with repetitive and intensifying meaning, oftentimes it is the first syllable which is reduplicated:
Periodic tense Kwaza has two
periodic tense markers, nocturnal sile- and matutinal kore-.
Case and agreement According to Van der Voort (2004), in Kwaza, there is no required morphological distinction in how pronouns and nouns function as objects and subjects. However, in certain cases, case inflection of nouns occurs. There is one case van der Voort describes a syntactic government relation between verb and argument. The suffix conveys this case, which is called the "animate object" case. Kwaza displays a small number of "oblique" or "local"
case markers which display semantic relations amongst verbs and possible nominal satellites. The suffix expresses "instrumental" case, expresses "locative", expresses "comitative" and expresses "beneficiary".
Animate object In some transitive verbs, specific animate non-subjects of verbs are marked by . is applied under situations not completely understood. What is known is often places stress on the animate non-subjects. is necessary for most verbs with animate nouns that have a direct object function: Other than elucidating which animate argument is the object, also disambiguates the subject from the object. It is especially useful when they are both third person arguments: is not always necessary to differentiate between object and subject, because verbal cross-reference obligatorily expresses the subject. For first and second person, subject cross-reference is not zero, but it is in third person. Even though cross-reference agreement is enough to distinguish subjects and objects, is still obligatory in some cases: Without , syntactic ambiguity occurs. But in cases with differences in animacy, no semantic-pragmatic ambiguity occurs. This can be seen in the following third person examples of an animate subject and inanimate object:
Transitivised verbs When verbs with the
transitivising morpheme occur with animate objects, they must be marked with : When the
causative is attached to
intransitive verbs, they are transitivised. In these cases only animate objects are marked:
Ditransitive verbs The indirect object is usually marked in common
ditransitive verbs while the animate object is unmarked:
Verbs with classifiers If transitive verbs with animate objects have classifying morphemes, is also attached. This occurs if the classifier added to the verb stem and when it is not: In Kwaza, objects of transitive verbs are usually case marked because they are of the animate category. Case marking becomes ungrammatical when they are inanimate. Case marking is not required to differentiate the object from the subject. The subject can be identified through cross-reference marking on the verb. This changes if all arguments are in third person, when arguments are in third person there can be ambiguity. Without case marking, on the basis of syntax alone, there is no way to distinguish third person animate subjects and objects. Case marking is obligatory with transitive verbs have arguments that are the same in person and animacy. has two functions: it marks objecthood and animacy.
Locative In Kwaza, the case ending expresses the sense of "in". can be used as a general marked to express several locational senses such as: "under, from, into", etc. is often seen with verbs that have a directional suffix:
Instrumental is used to mark nouns that function as an instrumental argument verbs:
Beneficiary marks beneficiary arguments:
Comitative marks comitative arguments. The matrix verb may be intransitive or transitive. == Syntax ==