[Lingtyp] Verb-like nominal inflection

[David Gil]

Ian,

As stated, your query is probably too broad and needs to be narrowed 
down somewhat.  Off the top of my head I can think of several examples 
where "nouns can be inflected like verbs", but none of them are much 
like each other or like Galela.

1. In Hebrew, the present tense of the verb, historically a participial 
form, agrees with its subject in number and gender using precisely the 
same forms, e.g.

Hayeladim oxlim
DEF:child:PLM eat:PRS:PLM

where the PLM suffix is -im for both noun and verb.

2. In Indonesian, reduplication marks plurality on both nouns and verbs 
(where for verbs it can be interpreted either as iterativity or as 
marking the plurality of an associated argument).

3. In Roon (SHWNG, Austronesian), nouns and verbs are indexed for 
person, number and animacy using the exact same markers, the only 
difference being that for nouns, the index occurs on an enclitic article 
=ya whereas for verbs it occurs on the verb stem itself, e.g.

Bunmuya mura
woman:2DU:DEF 2DU:go
'You two women are going'

where it's the same 2nd person dual prefix mu- marking both the article 
-ya and the verb -ra.  (Note that this is not a case of agreement, as in 
the Hebrew above, because in Roon, the subject and the verb don't have 
to agree.)

But you probably mean something more specific than this, I'm guessing ...

David


On 21/07/2020 18:10, Joo, Ian wrote:
>
> Dear all,
>
> In Galela (West Papuan), nouns can be inflected like verbs, as 
> illustrated below:
>
> I would like to know if this is a cross-linguistically common 
> phenomenon, and if so, what other languages show similar patterns.
>
> From Hong Kong,
>
> Ian
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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-- 
David Gil
  
Senior Scientist (Associate)
Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History
Kahlaische Strasse 10, 07745 Jena, Germany
  
Email: gil at shh.mpg.de
Mobile Phone (Israel): +972-556825895
Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091

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