A Grammar of Miya - UCLA Department of Linguistics

202 A Grammar of Miya
abut is word initial. It thus seems as if words with the a- prefix treat the Cr aC 2 V sequence
as word initial for the purposes of syllable formation.
We now tum to the question of the origin and function of this prefix. It correlates in no
way with lexical or semantic features, i.e. it appears on masculine, feminine, and plura]
nouns, and on nouns with animate, inanimate, mass, and count reference. As the examples
from other languages suggest, it also does not seem to correlate with cross-linguistic variables.
Phonological characteristics furnish one key to its origin: the prefix always bears Bthe
minimum stem to which it may be prefixed is CVC(a); tonally, the majority of word;
with the a- prefix have a downstepped H on the syllable after the prefix, the next largest
number copy the H of the prefix, and L after the prefix occurs on the fewest number of
stems. Of those with L, all have three or more consonants, e.g. avakiy 'thorn', avwilnrfa
'slipperiness'. ill fact, these proportions of tonal and segmental shapes for noun stems are
in about the same proportions as for nouns without the a- prefix. With this in mind, we
might search for some sort of formative which would appear only before nouns, and moreover,
nouns not falling into any particular lexical or semantic category. Such a formative is
the -a which forms part of the direct genitive construction for a feminine head noun
(lO:§3.1.1), e.g. tiltsiy + laaha ... tatsiy-a laaha 'tendon of jackal'. Since this linker appears
in only a subset of genitive constructions (cf. kusiy laaha 'bone of jackal', with a
masculine head noun), one can imagine that a reanalysis could have taken place, much as in
English an ewt> a newt, associating the a with the second ratber than the first noun, followed
by eventuallexicalization of some nouns with this new "prefix". This scenario receives
support from two behaviors of the prefix. First, the linking -a is Toneless, i.e. it
copies its tone from the preceding syllable; following a pause the a- prefix always bears H,
the default tone for Toneless domains (3:§3.1). Second, the prefix is absent in just those
environments where it is bound by some other noun phrase constituent, i.e. in just those
environments which would have furnished the ambiguous analysis to yield the prefix in the
first place. The environments where the prefix is retained are those where the noun would
be used in its "free", lexical form. I have no ready explanation for the fact that the prefix is
long in the "elsewhere" environments other than to point out that Miya has a number of
other lengthening processes which I do not fully understand.
2.4.2. Suffix -(wa)t •• A few nouns have a suffix -ta, with variant -ti under morphological
palatalization (2:§4), and in three words in my corpus, a variant -wata. This suffix appears
to be a formative for abstract nouns, making nouns from verbs in four cases, a noun
from an adjective in at least one case (possibly two, if 'sweetness' is from an adjective-I
could find no related root), and abstract nouns from nouns in three cases. The following
list is exhaustive for my materials:
agwarzhiwatg (m) 'growing up' cf. gwarzCJ ,
'grow up'
tlyto (f) 'beating' cf. tiy 'beat'
ayereti (m) 'growing old' cf. ghar 'grow old'
funbihnati (m) 'miserliness' cf.mbMma 'wink, blink'
kyarati (m) 'height' cf. karakara- 'tall'
piyato (m) 'sweetness'