Pichinglis - Overview of Pichi Grammar

Overview of Pichi Grammar

Pichi has a seven vowel system featuring the phonemes /i, e, ɛ, a, ɔ, o, u/. The consonant phonemes of Pichi are twenty-two: /p, b, t, d, tʃ, dʒ, k, ɡ, f, v, s, ʁ, h, m, n, ɲ, ŋ, l, w, j, kp, ɡb/. The co-articulated labiovelar plosives /kp/ and /ɡb/ are marginal and only occur in ideophones.
The language features a mixed prosodic system which employs both pitch-accent and tone. Pichi has two distinctive tones, a high (H) and a low (L) tone. In pitch-accented words, a phonetic (L) tone is the default realisation of a toneless syllable (X). Examples follow with the four possible tonal configurations for bisyllabic words (examples from Yakpo 2009:

The morphological structure of Pichi is largely isolating. However, there is a limited use of inflectional and derivational morphology in which affixation, tone and suppletive forms are put to use. For example, the categories of tense, modality and aspect are expressed through phonologically distinct preverbal particles. The verb stem is not altered:

Dan awa à bìn dɔn dè slip.
that-hour-1SG.SBJ-PST-PRF-IPFV-sleep
'(At) that time, I was already sleeping.'

Besides that, there is a limited use of inflectional morphology in the pronominal system, in which both tone and suppletive forms are used to express case relations. For example, the dependent subject pronoun à ‘1SG.SBJ’ has the allomorphs mì ‘1SG.POSS’ and mi ‘3SG.EMP’. In the following example, tone alone distinguishes possessive from objective case of the 1SG personal pronoun:

Dɛ̀n tif mi mì sus.
3PL-steal-1SG.EMP-1SG.POSS-shoe
'They stole my shoes from me.'

Pichi is an aspect-prominent language in which aspect (and mood), rather than tense plays a dominant role in expressing temporal relations. Besides that, the modal system includes an indicative-subjunctive opposition. Subjunctive mood is instantiated in the modal complementiser mek ‘SBJV’ and occurs in contexts characterised by the presence of deontic modality, i.e. in directive main clauses such as imperatives and other ‘mands’ as well as in the subordinate clauses of deontic modality inducing main predicates (see the first example below). Subjunctive mood also oocurs in purpose clauses (see the second example below):

È nak dì plet pàn dì tebul bìkɔs è want mek dì plet brok.
3SG.SBJ-hit-DEF-plate-on-DEF-table-because-3SG.SBJ-want-SBJV-DEF-plate-break
'He hit the plate on the table because he wanted the plate to break.'

Dɛ̀n kan kɛr mi nà Madrid fɔ̀ mek dɛ̀n go opera mi.
3pl-PFV-carry-1SG.EMP-LOC-Madrid-ASS-SBJV-3pl-go-operate-1SG.EMP
‘They took me to Madrid in order to go and operate on me.’

The language exhibits a subject–verb word order in intransitive clauses and a subject–verb–object order in transitive clauses. Content questions are formed by way of a mixed question-word system which involves transparent (e.g. us=tin 'which=thing' = 'what') and opaque question elements (udat 'who').

Clause linkage is characterised by a large variety of strategies and forms, in which the subordinator we, the quotative marker se, and the two modal complementisers fɔ̀ and mek stand out as multifunctional elements with overlapping functions. The language also features various types of multiverb and serial verb constructions. Amongst the latter figure instrumental serial verb constructions involving the verb tek 'take' as well as comparative constructions featuring the verb pas '(sur)pass'.