Desano language

There are two kinds of pronouns in Desano, namely personal pronouns and demonstrative pronouns. Some come with a masculine and feminine distinction in certain classes, similar to that of French or Portuguese.

Personal pronouns in Desano are somewhat comparable to that of “I, we, you, they, he, she, it” in English, in a sense that there is a distinction between first, second, third person, and also singular or plural subjects.

Silva (2012)

Demonstrative pronouns are used to “make a distinction between ‘proximal’ and ‘distal’ (Silva 2012), such distinction of proximity could be understood as using ‘this’ or ‘that’ in English, in relation to the distance between the speaker and the object.

The two main verb classes of Desano are stative and non-stative. There are five subcategories of stative verbs. Firstly, there is the copula verb /adi/, which is used to describe either temporary or permanent states..[2] There is also the non-existential verb /badi/, which is used for negation, stating that something does not exist. This can be used in combination with nouns to state the nonexistence of a noun. The third subcategory is the stative possessive, /ohpa/. This verb can be used to express “to have” or “to hold”, and can describe both temporary and permanent states.[2] The fourth subcategory is locative and position verbs. This includes the verb /digi/ ‘be standing’, /bede/ or /duo/ ‘to stay’, and /peya/ ‘to be on top of’. The verb /peya/ appears dependently. Finally, there are descriptive stative verbs, which have the same function of adjectives. In general, Desano uses descriptive stative verbs rather than a separate class of adjectives.[2]

There are four prominent subcategories of non-stative verbs. Firstly, there are active verbs that act as the subject of a clause, started by an active agent.[2] There are transitive, intransitive, and ditransitive variations. The second subcategory is motion verbs, which includes basic motion, directional, and relational. The third subcategory is placement verbs, which occur independently. The fourth subcategory is verbs of perception and mental processes. Verbs of perception can be transitive or intransitive. Some examples are /yɑ̃/ ‘to see’ and /pe/ ‘to hear’. Mental process verbs include beye ‘to explain’ and kẽ ‘to dream’.[2]

Nouns in Desano are categorized by animate, which has subcategories of human and nonhuman, and inanimate, which has subcategories of countable and uncountable.[2] Nouns that are human referents are marked by gender. The singular masculine marker is u/-gu and the singular feminine marker is -o/-go.[2] Some nouns naturally have the gender marking suffix in them, due to an amalgamation of the root of the noun and the gender marking suffix, therefore they are considered to be inherently feminine or masculine.[2]

Extracted from Silva (2012)

Desano is hierarchical. Third-person is at the top of the hierarchy, followed by animate, then singular, and lastly, masculine.[3] At the end of declarative sentences in Desano, there are personal endings that are in agreement with the verb’s subject.

Personal endings in Desano (Kaye, 1970, p. 84)

biN 3rd person, singular, masculine

boN 3rd person, singular, feminine

baN 3rd person, plural

byy non-3rd person/inanimate

Personal endings in use (1970, p. 84 Kaye)

jyy waa+by ‘i go’

byyN waa+by ‘you go’

igyn waa+biN ‘he goes’

igo waa+boN ‘she goes’

gya waa+by ‘we (excl.) go’

badiN waa+by ‘we (incl.) go’

byaN waa+by ‘you-all go”

idaN waa+baN ‘they go’

wydidu waa+by ‘the airplane goes’

Singular is a feature often given by a base rule. Third-person, animate, and masculine are often thought of as being inherent features of nouns; however, there is some evidence that shows masculine behaves differently than third-person and animate. The evidence supports the claim that it is a feature that is provided grammatically, not inherently a noun feature.[3] The masculine feature in Desano is unmarked, and only given to nouns that are animate-singular.

/abe/ ‘sun, moon’ Desano people would not consider this object to be feminine or masculine, therefore it is unmarked for gender. This means that in cases of agreement, /abe/ will act as a masculine noun.[3] Many nouns which are presented as unmarked for gender will behave as a masculine or feminine noun, with the only indication of gender being the personal verb ending.[3]

Desano has three tenses, general, non-present, and remote, respectively. According to Kaye (1970), the three tenses are marked with T (general), a (non-present), and R (remote). General tense does not have an embedded timeframe, the time aspect is assumed to be at the time of speech,[3] which is comparable to present and present progressive tense in English. While on the other hand, non-present tense also does not specify a particular time or space, except for the differentiation from the present time and present space where the conversation takes place. In which, the non-present tense could be used to demonstrate various distinct aspects of English at once, meaning it could be used for observed, non-visible, reported, and inferred situations. Lastly, remote tense refers to events that took place or will take place at a relative distance before or from the present time and/or space. Three tenses of Desano uses relative measurement of time and space, which relies heavier on the speaker’s judgement at the time of the conversation.

Examples of general tense, extracted from :[3]

Examples of non-Present tense, extracted from :[3]

Examples of Remote tense, extracted from :[3]

From the examples above, it is evident that the tense marker is clearly visible in the written script. Instead of modifying the target verb like many languages (such as transforming eat to ate for the past tense in English), Desano tense markers come in the form of an additional block after the target verb (illustrated by T, e, and R). Overall, Desano tense works closely with its unique mood system, which also embeds emotion into the written form of the grammar itself.