Morphosyntax

To make a word complete, one has to add a vowel to a stem. The open vowel slot of a root may be filled with two alternative forms of vowels: V_case or V_val.

To make a word complete, a case affix V_case must be used. So when adding a valence affix V_val, a new syllable is opened at the beginning of the word to make space for a case affix. The consonant that is needed is always a mood/evidence affix C_m/e. I.e., there are two principles:

• If you use a valence affix, you must also use a mood/evidence affix.
• Every word carries a case affix.

Qþyn|gài distinguishes between semantical valence and syntactical valence: for a given semantical valence, the language allows arguments to be left out. Both, this syntactical valence and the semantical valence must be marked at the head.

To clarify the difference (and also the difference wrt. to English), have a look at the following sentences.

In English, one would analyse 'to read' to have a semantical valence of two (it takes a subject and an object), while 'to work' has a semantical valence of one, since there cannot be a direct object. It you want to express the object someone works at, you need to use an oblique object in English, a prepositional adjunct, thus.

In sentence (1), the object of 'to read' is left out. So the syntactical valence is only one. In sentence (4), the syntactical valence is also counted as one, because there is no direct object.

In English, however, there are cases where a syntactical valence of a verb is still counted as two, because the sentence does not involve a demotion (in sentence (1) above, the object is not mentioned because it is unimportant). Such a sentence would be:

In example (5), the subject of 'to read' is not demoted, it is clearly 'Mary', who has simply been left out in the second clause. Therefore, one still analyses that 'to read' in sentence (5) has a syntactical valence of two.

Qþyn|gài works slightly differently. Semantical valence in Qþyn|gài would include the consideration of importance/demotion, since this demotion is not regarded as purely syntactical. The syntactical valence in Qþyn|gài is taken to be the realisation at the very surface only, so when you leave out -- for whatever reasons -- a subject or an object (agent/patient in Qþyn|gài), the verb is marked for this. Thus the syntactical valence would be different and the verb must be marked for different syntactical valence in sentences (5) and (2).

Turning around the view, much of what is called semantical valence in Qþyn|gài would be called syntactical valence in English. E.g. in sentence (1) and (3), the verbs 'to read' and 'to work' would be marked for a different semantical valence in Qþyn|gài due to the demotion of the object. Sentences (3) and (4) are distinguished in the same way as (1) and (2) -- there is no need to use an oblique object in (4) in Qþyn|gài.

As has been mentioned, a head in Qþyn|gài may want up to two arguments:

• agent
• patient

Qþyn|gài is a fluid-S language: assignment of agent vs. patient is done by control in Qþyn|gài and may be different for the same predicate in different situations.

The semantic valence finely adjusts the meaning of a word, e.g. it may change 'to fall' (pat) to 'to fell' (agt, pat): in the case of 'to fall', there is no agent, while in the second, there is.

The valence affix also marks the case when two arguments are identical (reflexive valence), or act on each other (reciprocal). Therefore, there are no reflexive pronouns in Qþyn|gài.

To abbreviate a semantical valence, we use the letters A and P for agent and patient, respectively. After such a letter, a plus (+) or minus (-) indicates whether the stem selects the corresponding argument. E.g. P-,A+ would be the valence that selects no patient but an agent. The minus-parts may be left out. The order reflects the argument order after their head.

To mark a reflexive link, two letters are joined with an equal sign (=), e.g. P=A+ would be the reflexive version of P+,A+. It selects only one argument that is understood as the agent and the patient.

To mark a reciprocal link, two letters are joined with a hash symbol (#), e.g. P#A+ is the reciprocal version of P+,A+. It selects one argument (which must consist of more than one entity) whose members are understood to act on each other: as agent and patient and vice versa.

Syntactically, a head cannot select more arguments that its semantical valence suggests. If an argument is left out, however, it will be marked with an asterisk (.). E.g. the syntactical valence P.,A+ is the semantical valence P+,A+ where the patient is not made explicit in the sentence.

When an argument is incorporated, the head marks this, too. We use a period (*) to indicate this. Cores come before free arguments, since they are incorporated into the predicate, so the agent may be in front of the patient this way.

The following overview shows all combinations.

In total there are 16 + 1 + 3 + 3 = 23 valence infixes that exist in Qþyn|gài. Some valence affixes will use a vowel plus a prefix in the same way as case affixes work. See also the table valence infixes.

Stems can be reduced to cores and then be suffixed to their head or a sequence of other cores instead of being used as an own word.

The reversed versions are used for 'heavy NP shifts': Qþyn|gài likes to have the lightweight NP first. If it becomes too heavy, the arguments may be swapped. Note that this is a pragmatic preference and need not be strictly followed.

Indirect objects are handled either with SVC (serial verb construction), or by derivation ('to give' is one example that suffixes to the transferred item) or with adjuncts.

Words are marked for valence. The arguments needed to satisfy the valence constraints follow their head in the order defined by the valence infix. Any of these may be missing, but must then be marked as missing by the valence affix.

A head is said to be saturated if all arguments selected by the syntactical valence are supplied (sic!). All arguments needed for the semantical valence are then either supplied or marked as missing in the valence infix. A saturared head is also called a clause.

Everything that carries non-nullary valence also carries mood/evidence information. There is no infix for nullary valence: case infixes imply nullary valence. (Thus case and valence infixes are disjoint sets of infixes.)

Modifiers precede the modified phrase. A modifier is marked with a case to show in what way it modifies. See also the table of case infixes.

Saturated phrases may be modified, too. And clauses may modify other clauses. This automatically gives you sub-ordination: sub-ordination is handled by case infixes in Qþyn|gài.

Coordination is either done by juxtaposition, or by an enclitical coordination particle. Juxtaposition means that the two constituents that are coordinated occur next to each other in the same case. In this form, it is sometimes ambiguous whether they modify each other or whether they both modify another clause. Further, the type of coordination has to be inferred ('and', 'or', 'but', etc. are all possible)

The juxtapositional realisation of coordination is especially common in the context of reciprocal arguments to predicates.

The second syntactic form of coordination is composed using a clitic coordination on the first word of the second clause. This is quite similar to Latin '-que' and '-ve' clitics.

Qþyn|gài really dislikes coordination, since it breaks the possibility of incorporating the arguments into the predicate, so sentences get more awkward. Therefore, native speakers have a tendency to introduce referents one at a time, without the need for coordinations like 'and'. E.g. it is typical to avoid 'Peter and Mary were talking to each other' (requires three words) but instead to use 'Concerning Peter, Mary and him (lit.'together with him') were talking to each other.' (awkward or even wrong in English, but correct in Qþyn|gài and only requires two words).

Dislocation is the operation of moving away constituents from their standard place in the clause to some other, non-standard place, usually for pragmatic reasons, e.g. because a heavy clause is preferred at the end of sentences. A right-dislocation due to heaviness of a clause will be called heavy-shift.

Qþyn|gài has a preference of light-weight clause before heave ones in the same way as many natural languages. For this reason, Qþyn|gài provides means of dislocation of arguments and adjuncts.

For arguments to predicates, the valence infix can be changed to mark dislocation. This only applies to the case where both patient and agent are free. Qþyn|gài has valence markers for P+,A+ as well as A+,P+, the latter being the non-standard order used for heavy-shifts.

In order to right-dislocate adjuncts, the shift is be marked on the head using a dislocation infix. The dislocated adjuncts will follow at the very end of the sentence after the arguments. That infix can only mark that dislocated adjuncts exist, but not which ones. As a consequence, it is very uncommon to mark the head and an argument to have dislocated adjuncts. Strong pragmatic reasons, however, might still lead to such a situation -- it is not prohibited.

The dislocation infix is inserted into the predicate just before the stem carrying the valence information. It never occurs as a word of its own. Adjuncts can only be dislocated if their head carries a valence infix.

By juxtapositing clauses in the same case, apart from the coordination 'and', a serial verb construction may be expressed.

Qþyn|gài allows both agent and patient to be shared in the construction. The initial agent/patient occurs with the first predicate in a sequence, the following predicates share those that the valence marks to be implicit.

The meaning of a serial verb construction is either a very closely related temporal sequence, or it marks one action that all the predicates describe (the first predicate is modified by the others, which give detailed information about the manor), or it marks mere 'and' coordination.

A frequently used SVC is with the head 'to do' + patient, which marks secondary, tertiary, etc. patients of complex predicates. The precise meaning of such non-primary patients will be clarified in the lexicon.

Some serial verb constructions may be incorporated by simply sequencing the heads and handling them as one head. In this case, the sharing of agent/patient is implicit and must be derived from discourse. This phenomenon is handled in the lexicon, too, by describing those heads that allow this as derivational suffixes.

The third person in Qþyn|gài is split into several words for reference. The following stems exist.

All of these pronouns may refer to another entity in the discourse, or to a whole clause. (This is despite the fact that the pronouns are derived from the root 'person', which carries the 'sentient' classifier consonant).

Pronouns, when used as derivatives, have possessive meaning, i.e. book + 3p = his/her/its/their book.

Note that the effects of x–hhyràu and x–hhyráu are implemented in many languages by a verbal category called 'switch reference'. The term is not appropriate for Qþyn|gài since the implementation in Qþyn|gài is dependent-marking (at the pronoun) instead of head-marking (at the verb).

Qþyn|gài features derivational suffixes that modify the meaning of a head in the similar way an pronoun adjunct does. The meaning is not exactly the same, in that the derivational suffix is regarded more elegent, more natural, and has a higher potential of forming idioms or lexical entries. A free adjunct may be chosen when an additional stress or focus on that adjunct is to be expressed (though the derivational suffix allows a focus marker, too).

For each of Qþyn|gài's four persons, a roots exist that takes a case vowel to form a derivational suffix expressing an incorporated adjunct in that case. The following table shows the stems for the pronouns and the corresponding incorporated adjunct roots, which are converted to a stem by adding a case vowel.

Qþyn|gài features applicative derivational suffixes that promote an adjunct to patient position. The original patient (if the predicate had one before) is demoted to secondary patient and has to be expressed by a serial verb construction (SVC) with the verb 'to do' + patient

Note that it is not required that adjuncts transformed in this way have a semantical valence of zero, so they by the loss of their valence infix, the clause might become (more) ambiguous.

Qþyn|gài features the following voices, or better valence shifts, all derivational suffixes. Please not that valence shifts in Qþyn|gài only change the focus on the arguments only very slightly, if at all. Therefore, I will avoid the word 'voice'. The main means to remove or add focus are explicit focus particles, and the means to remove arguments totally, is to change the valence infix. Voices in Qþyn|gài are mainly used to facilitate a more elegant and concise sentence structure, i.e., usually to use less words.

To stress this again: adding a passive valence shift marker to a structure removes the agent from the syntactic argument structure and moves the patient into agent position, but still, there is no focus shift demoting the agent. One of the main purposes of this operation is to add an applicative, which re-occupies the now free patient slot.