Verbal gender marking on the inflected verb was investigated. The
presence of this feature is exemplified by Sawi, in (1). The verb in
Sawi is marked for gender (and number) in agreement with the
intransitive subject or the transitive direct object. In (1a), the verb
agrees with the direct object ‘stick’ in feminine singular, in (1b) with
the direct object ‘women’ in feminine plural, in (1c) with the direct
object ‘(male) child’ in masculine singular, and in (1d) with the direct
object ‘books’ in masculine plural.
(1) Sawi
[sdg] (Indo-Aryan)
| a. |
mɑːnuʂ-eː |
ɖunɖik |
ʑup-ɑːl-i |
|
|
man-obl |
stick(f) |
make-pfv-fsg |
|
|
‘The man made a stick.’ (SDG-Val-FR:085) |
| b. |
mɑːnuʂ-u |
ɬiɽɛ |
loːʈ-ɑːl-ɛ |
|
|
|
|
man-obl.pl |
woman.pl |
search.for-pfv-fpl |
|
|
|
|
‘The men searched for the women.’ (SDG-Val-FR:011) |
| c. |
mɑːli |
tɑːnu |
mɑːɕum-eː |
duw-ɑːl-oː |
|
mother |
refl |
child(m)-obl |
wash-pfv-msg |
|
‘The mother washed the baby.’ (SDG-Val-FR:012) |
| d. |
asi |
laːw-u-ʈeː |
kitaːb-a |
dit-eː |
|
|
|
1pl.erg |
child-obl.pl-dat |
book(m)-pl |
give.pfv-mpl |
|
|
|
‘We gave the books to the children.’ (SDG-Val-FR:036) |
Verbal person agreement (in at least one tense-aspect category) is
present in a majority of the sample languages, including Burushaski and
most of the Indo-Aryan and Nuristani languages, while entirely excluding
Sino-Tibetan and Turkic. Geographically most of the languages displaying
this feature are found in the southern half of the region.
