Good evening, afternoon, or morning to you, people of r/conlangs. Today's Saturday, and that means it's time for another typological paper! Once again, there will be some prompts for you to discuss in the comments.
Apprehension as a grammatical category in Ngumpin-Yapa languages (Browne & Ennever)
This week's paper was submitted by u/PyrolatrousCoagulate and discusses the phenomenon in Ngumpin-Yapa languages (Pama-Nyungan, Australia) in which apprehension, i.e. the possibility of an undesirable outcome to an event or entity, is marked grammatically. This is not a typological paper per se, but it shows that there are many possibilities for certain semantics to become grammaticalized, which in turn will probably be very interesting for us conlangers! Now let's move onto the prompts:
- Does your language mark apprehension grammatically?
- How does apprehension marking work in general?
- What locus of exponence do apprehensive markers take in your language? Do they modify the noun as case morphemes, are they mood inflections, non-inflecting particles or something entirely else?
- Are there any secondary functions your apprehensive markers can take? Any homophony with other markers?
- How do apprehensive markers behave on a discourse level?
- If not, how does it express apprehension in various contexts?
Remember to try to comment on other people's languages
Submit your papers here!
So, that's about it for this week's edition. See you next Saturday, and happy conlanging!