Abstract
Sinyar, an alleged Central Sudanic language of Western Darfur, is characterized by two distinct and complementary case marker (sub)systems, the distribution of which provides a morphosyntactic justification of the distinction between common nouns and proper names. The paper considers the two case marking types as well as the semantic content of the category of names. It further presents and tries to explain the behavior of several nouns that may also be marked as names. It finally reviews two types of units that show formal affinities with the marking of names, namely absolute locative nouns on one side, and demonstratives and personal pronouns on the other side.
Glosses and abbreviations
- !
tonal downstep (tonology)
- °-
neutralization of preceding tonal downstep (see fn. 13)
- =
equivalent/similar to
- 1p/2p/3p
1st/2nd/3rd person plural
- 1pd
1st person plural (dual)
- 1pe
1st person plural (exclusive)
- 1pe/d
1st person plural (exclusive or dual)
- 1pi
1st person plural (inclusive)
- 1s/2s/3s
1st/2nd/3rd person singular
- 3
3rd person
- Acc
accusative (names, demonstratives, and personal pronouns)
- adv
adverbial (nouns)
- Adv
adverbial (names, demonstratives, and personal pronouns)
- appl
applicative
- Ar.
Arabic
- c.n.
common noun
- detop
detopicalized form
- f
female
- foc
focalizer (of subject)
- fut
future
- Gen
genitive (names, demonstratives, and personal pronouns)
- imp
imperative
- interr
interrogative
- ipfv
imperfective
- irr. pl.
irregular plural
- loc
locative suffix
- m
male
- neg
negative, negation
- Nom
nominative (names, demonstratives, and personal pronouns)
- nom
nominative (nouns)
- pastneg
past negative
- perm
permansive
- pfv
perfective
- pl
plural
- prgr
progressive
- prhb
prohibitive
- pst
past
- rel
relative
- SBB
Sara-Bongo-Bagirmi
- sg
singular
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