Sahaśe

Sahaśe [sa'haʃe]
Period	c. -600 YP
Spoken in	Southern Peilaš
Total speakers	c. 25,000
Writing system	Nopa Script
Classification	Western languages  Tmaśareʔ
Typology
Basic word order	SOV
Morphology	agglutinating w/ some fusion
Alignment	ERG-ABS
Credits
Created by	Mouse-tache

Sahaśo Sipa, or simply Sahaśe, is a Western language of the Desert subgroup, possibly a direct descendant of TmaśareɁ. It is spoken on the high plateau south of the mountains that define the northern edge of southern Peilaš, mostly in the cool steppe above a thousand meters elevation. The Western colonization of the plateau may have begun as early as -1100, but the language described here is from the year -600 when the area is dominated by tens of thousands of Western speakers. Sahaśe is an ergative-absolutive language with strongly head-final syntax and moderately complex morphology.

Phonology

Phoneme inventory

	labial	alveolar	palatal	velar	glottal
plosive	p	t · ʦ		k
fricative		s	ʃ		h
nasal	m	n
liquid	w	l	j

ʦ, ʃ, and j are written ts, ś, and y

	front	central	back
high	i		u
mid	e · ẽ		o · õ
low		a

Phonotactics

Vowel hiatus is not allowed within a word.

Most CC clusters are allowed, but only hC, Ch, kw, and ny are common. Ts does not count as a cluster.

Morphology

Verbal Morphology

Sahaśe verbs consist of a stem and up to three layers of suffixes.

Stem

Slot 1

Slot 2

Slot 3

Slot 1 primarily gives information about the absolutive argument. -he: 1st person absolutive -hwa: 2nd or 3rd person absolutive I -mo: 2nd or 3rd person absolutive II The use of -mo is not always straight-forward. Its most common use is in reported speech. However, it can also be used as an irrealis marker, or to introduce important ideas within a narrative. When subsequent clauses have the same absolutive argument, especially when they are coordinated in some overt way, it may be possible to omit this layer of morphology, but this is subject to complex issues of tone and context.

Slot 2 marks a clause’s place in a larger utterance. -la: protasis -khi: apodosis -po: contrast The contrast suffix -po indicates that an idea is counter intuitive or contrasts with another clause, appearing in places where “however” or “even” might appear in English.

Slot 3 contains only one optional suffix. -ya: indicates that a clause is important or surprising.

• tsehtahepya
  GLOSS
  GLOSS
  They still yelled at me!

• sahasila
  GLOSS
  GLOSS
  Because they said it...

Note that these are suffixes added to the stem, not the root. Layers of inherited Western grammatical affixes have become lexicalized, and are better treated as derivational morphology rather than grammatical. Here is a diagram of the verb stem.

Slot 1

Root

Slot 2

Slot 3

Slot 1 historically produced applicatives that altered the role of the absolutive. However, these are not longer predictable from the original root. s- (sa- before clusters or ś): usually the absolutive is some sort of beneficiary, target, or purpose. mak- (k assimilates to following l, j, ń): usually the absolutive is a tool, means, or location.

Slot 2 consists of denominal suffixes. -yya, -yyi, -yyo (the vowel matches the last vowel of the root): stative, “to be” -tska: active, “to make/do”

Slot 3 contains various semantic extensions. Historically these would have had predictable meanings, but today the stems in which these suffixes appear are best treated as unique lexical units. -ta: used with experience and handling verbs, sometimes with a reflexive meaning. -ni: used with experience and handling verbs, often denoting the presence or manipulation of objects. -ki (or -k before -ma): used with experience and handling verbs, especially when the absolutive is not well defined or not easily handled. -ttso: used with motion and handling verbs to create logical consequences or intensives. -nittso and -kittso are also found, but rarely, and only with handling verbs.

• kikhokitska
  GLOSS
  GLOSS
  To clear land for farming

• maklenyani
  GLOSS
  GLOSS
  To wield something for digging

Nominal Morphology

Sahaśe nouns consist of a stem plus prefixes and suffixes that are obligatory in some situations.

Slot 1

Stem

Slot 2

Slot 1 is inalienable possession. Body parts and kinship terms must take the prefix na- when belonging to the speaker, and i- otherwise. The prefixes are not used when speaking about body parts of kinship terms in general without reference to a specific object or person. For all other nouns, possession involves no special morphology. The possessor, in the oblique case, simply precedes the possessed thing.

Slot 2 is case. The oblique is formed by changing the final vowel to o, or i if the final stem vowel is o. There is also a productive locative, formed by replacing the final vowel with -ahmo.

• ihnahmo
  In the valley

As with verbs, noun stems in Sahaśe noun stems are complex. In addition to the root itself there are modifier prefixes, plural markers on animate nouns, and deverbal suffixes. Many forms have become lexicalized and not predictable, and so noun stems are listed in the lexicon, not roots.

Slot 1

Slot 2

Root

Slot 3

Slot 1 is modifier prefixes. This a closed class based on a much more productive derivational process in older Western languages.

Slot 2 indicates plurality in animate nouns. Historically, this was accomplished by reduplication, but time has turned most plural stems into forms that must be memorized. As a result, plural forms are listed in the lexicon where they exist.

Slot 3 is Deverbal suffixes. These suffixes delete the final root vowel, unless the root is one syllable or ends in a consonant. They attach to verbal roots, not stems. -sa, -si, -so (the vowel matches the final root vowel): makes a patient -me: makes an action or event -pa, -pi, -po (matching final root vowel): makes a noun that is the absolutive of the verb

[EXAMPLES]

• śkaksa
  Friends

• kwetseme
  Jumping

Syntax

Sahaśe has strict head-final syntax.

Noun Phrase

Pronouns may stand in for nouns, and come in personal and non-personal varieties. The personal pronouns are 1st person na (oblique no) and 2nd person ta (oblique to). Non-personal pronouns do not decline for case, but have proximate and distal versions. The proximate versions may indicate something close at hand or topical, while the distal versions indicate old information or things far from the speaker. Pronouns never indicate number or take the locative case ending.

	proximal	distal
human	yo	ku
non-human	yani	kwini

Numerals, properties, and possessors precede the head noun.

Adverbs

The proximal and distal pronouns have adverbial equivalents, yaśi and kweśi, respectively.

Clausal Syntax

Clauses can be linked with post-positioned conjunctions.

• tsenyepahe sa kakwaya
  GLOSS
  GLOSS
  I cried and (then) laughed

The pronoun lo (animate) or lani (inanimate) begins relative clauses. Relative clauses precede their target noun.