Nicholas Evans. 2013. Nen.
In: Hartmann, Iren & Haspelmath, Martin & Taylor, Bradley (eds.)
Valency Patterns Leipzig.
Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
(Available online at http://valpal.info/contributions/nenn1238, Accessed on 2025-05-07.)
Comments
Characterization of flagging resources
Case (ergative/absolutive), around 12 case suffixes. ERG/ABS neutralisation in
singular case forms of pronouns only.
Characterization of indexing resources
Verb indexes up to two arguments, undergoer by prefix and actor by suffix. Only
around 25 verbs are morphologically intransitive: all but 4 of them belonging to
a special 'positional' class, the rest being 'be', 'come' (lit. hither-be), 'go'
(lit. 'thither-be') and 'walk'. Other syntactically monovalent verbs use
a morphologically middle construction with a person/number-invariant prefix plus
a person/number sensitive suffix. The 'undergoer' verb prefixes are used for
both direct and indirect objects, though these are flagged by different cases
(absolutive and dative) on the corresponding free NPs.
Characterization of ordering resources
Word order is predominantly SOV (i.e. APV), though with some flexibility allowed
by discourse factors. However, in the very productive 'experiencer object'
construction used for most physical sensations like pain or disease, however,
the order is PAV, i.e. the experiencer of the pain is generally placed first
despite the fact that on other grounds it is the undergoer: it takes absolutive
case and is cross-reference by the undergoer prefix.
