Classifiers I
As teased before, I am gonna start talking about Shembaba's classifier system. There is a lot to unpack here, so I'll split this into several posts, so stay tuned!
Let's first start with the question: What does Shembaba use classifiers for?
Counting
Quantifiers (+ the root for 'other')
Demonstratives
Relative clauses
Comparison
1. and 2. don't come as a surprise - numeral classifiers are a staple of many languages and since Shembaba is a language that doesn't mark number on its nouns at all, this is an obvious and elegant way to still make them quantifiable. I am also inclined to add 3. to the not-so-surprising list because to me this is sort of just an extension of the quantificational utility of classifiers. 4. and 5., finally, are more structural in nature and show off how the classifiers can be used outside of basic quantification purposes. I'll split this post accordingly to look at each of these five phenomena.
So let's have a look at how 1. works by counting to ten with different items! (Yes, Shembaba is a basic decimal bish. First of all, because no way I'm gonna engage in higher maths in my free time. And secondly, Elves inhabit a strong cultural power position in our pen-and-paper-world and it wouldn't have made sense to me if the humans of that world hadn't adopted the Elves' counting system if they had had a different one. So to not confuse my players and stay within my logic, it was only pragmatic to go with base-10.)
Sābra sammia mountain one-CL.places One mountain Kȳran sheibe elf two-CL.humanoids Two elves Hepan bānshi dwarf three-CL.child.sized Three dwarves Batonular whespa elephant four-CL.land.animals Four elephants Ānavendrān mēppa sturgeon five-CL.aquatic.animals Five sturgeons Kaspārem mūksān crow six-CL.flying.animals Six crows Sazhiāzma smabō arrow seven-CL.long.robust Seven arrows Astrīmma lyllōr rope eight-CL.long.flexible Eight ropes Wheknarīmma lōlīn blanket nine-CL.flat.flexible Nine blankets Nairīmma iānkaiv shield ten-CL.flat.robust Ten shields
As you can deduce from the glossing, the classifier is compounded onto the root of the number word as a suffix. Furthermore, the number follows its countee - so the other way around from English. So the general pattern is:
noun number-classifier
However, we can also put the number first if we want to stress the quantity of something. Then, the countee will stand in its genitive form. In English we usually achieve this effect by simply putting more prosodic stress on the number.
number-classifier noun-GEN Iān-sanngēshi kuiēshīn ten-one-CL.shapeless cloud-GEN Eleven clouds (and not ten or twelve)
What happens when the noun isn't in the nominative? That's quite easy: in the unmarked case where the numeral follows, only the head noun receives case marking. If the focus is on the number and it therefore comes before the counted noun, then the classifier receives the case marking and the noun stays behind in its genitive form.
Mōlökken bānnām mönnias degener. cat-DAT three-CL.domesticated.animals home-ACC 1-give-IMPFV I'm giving the three cats a home. Whezhiānggertio wheköngguken emmev??? fourty-CL.edible.plants peach-GEN 2-eat-PFV You ate 40 peaches???
From the second example you can maybe already gauge that the way to build bigger numbers in Shembaba is pretty straight forward; it's a simple pattern of n x 10 + m (e.g. mūgi 'six' + iān 'ten' + sang- 'one' = mūgiān-sang-CL '61'), n x 100 + m x 10 + o (e.g. whez 'four' + kuna 'hundred' + lō 'nine' + iān 'ten' + bān- 'three' = wheskuna-lokiān-bān-CL '493') etc.
So far I've numbers up to one million and I think unless there's a specific reason I need to I won't go higher up than that. To round it off, I'm giving you one last table with more examples to look at with higher numbers that I'll lazily copy from my document without glossing or telling you the exact specifiers at work. Once I'm done with this classifier series, I'll probably give you a list with the classifiers I have so far.
Oh, right, and the number zero – this is the only case where the number always appears in the focussed construction. I.e. genggra 'zero' always is the head and the countee follows it in the genitive. It is also the only number that doesn't require a classifier, as you might call it a classifier all by itself. Literally this construction just means something like 'a nothingness of'. (You can find an example in the table.)
