How one language became four: the impact of different contact-scenarios between “Sadani” and the tribal languages of Jharkhand

1 Introduction

While the first official language of the state of Jharkhand in eastern central India is Hindi, over 96% of the state population speaks a local tribal or regional language as their first (L1) or second language (L2) on a daily basis, and only 3.7% of the people speak Hindi as their first language (JTWRI 2013:4–5). “Tribal language” refers here to Austro-Asiatic and Dravidian languages spoken in the region, while “regional languages” are local Indo-Aryan languages restricted to this region which do not have any official status outside of Jharkhand. Sadri/Nagpuri and Khortha are the two largest regional languages spoken in Jharkhand, followed by Kurmali and Panchparganiya. Along with a few other languages, these four languages have been granted the status of second official state languages of Jharkhand. The four largest Munda languages spoken in Jharkhand are Santali, Mundari and Ho, all North Munda, and Kharia, a South Munda language. The largest Dravidian language spoken in Jharkhand is Kurux/Kurukh, which belongs to the North Dravidian branch together with the smaller Malto, also spoken in the state. Gondi (South-Central Dravidian) has also traditionally been spoken in some western parts of the state, although all members of this ethnic group in Jharkhand now appear to speak the Indo-Aryan language Sadri/Nagpuri as their L1.

“Sadani”, which is the main focus of the present study, is often found in the linguistic literature with one of two different meanings. The first, more restricted meaning refers to the linguistic variety now generally referred to in Jharkhand as either “Sadri” or “Nagpuri”, one of the four languages dealt with in the present study. For example, Nowrangi (1956) and Jordan-Horstmann (1969), two grammars of Sadri/Nagpuri, refer to this language in their works as Sadani and Sadānī, respectively. This use of the term Sadani appears to have been more prevalent in past decades than it is at present.

In the second, more general meaning, and that which reflects the situation in Jharkhand today, Sadani refers to the four closely related Indo-Aryan varieties Panchparganiya, Khortha, Kurmali and Sadri/Nagpuri collectively, which are spoken throughout Jharkhand and neighboring states. These four varieties are generally considered independent languages in the region. Sadani in this sense reflects the fact that these languages are traditionally spoken by the Sadan (sʌdān), the non-tribal, Indo-Aryan-speaking ethnic groups of Jharkhand (e.g. Nowrangi 1956: ii), who presumably first brought Indo-Aryan languages to this region.

In accordance with the use of these terms in Jharkhand today, we follow the second, more general use in this study, referring to Sadani as a cover term for all four closely related linguistic varieties traditionally spoken by the Sadan. Figure 1 shows the approximate relative positions of these four languages with respect to one another in Jharkhand.^[1]

Figure 1:

The approximate relative positions of the four Sadani varieties of Jharkhand and neighboring states.^[3]

All four of these languages belong to what has often been referred to as the “Bihari” branch of Indo-Aryan, a term going back at least to Grierson (1903) which includes the Sadani languages in our use of the term but also Bhojpuri, Maithili, and Magahi, among others. The term “Bihari” has fallen into disuse among most modern researchers, among other reasons^[2] because it explicitly refers to the state of Bihar, now only half the size of what it was prior to 2000, when the southern half of that state become the newly formed state of Jharkhand, but also because these languages are also spoken in Chhattisgarh, eastern Uttar Pradesh, southern Nepal, western West Bengal and elsewhere. For this reason we prefer the term “Magadhan” to refer to these languages, as this refers to the larger region of eastern central India from which these languages originated, coinciding largely (although not entirely) with the territory of the former kingdom of Magadha.

In the usual classification of Indo-Aryan, at least assuming an “inner-outer” distinction,^[4] the Magadhan group is a member of the eastern outer group of Indo-Aryan, together with the Bengali–Assamese and Oriya branches. This is illustrated in Figure 2, adapted and simplified from the classification found in Eberhard et al. (2019) for the Indo-Aryan group of languages, with a small number of languages indicated for reference.

Figure 2:

The place of Magadhan within Indo-Aryan, adapted and simplified from. The classification in Eberhard et al. (2019).

Opinions among linguists differ considerably with respect to the status of the individual Sadani languages within Indo-Aryan. For example, whereas Eberhard et al. (2019) consider Kurmali and Panchparganiya to be separate languages, Grierson (1903: 146–147) considers them to be Eastern Magahi dialects. On the other hand, Khortha – which Grierson (1903) also considers to be an Eastern Magahi dialect – is listed as a dialect both of Maithili and Magahi by Eberhard et al. (2019). For Sadri/Nagpuri, there has been general consensus in studies produced by non-native speakers since at least Grierson (1903) that this is a Bhojpuri dialect (cf. e.g. Grierson 1903; Jordan-Horstmann 1969; Tiwari 1960), although Yadav (2012) suggests that Nepali Sadri might be a dialect of Maithili (2012: 2).

These classifications are at odds with the intuition of most native speakers, who view Sadri/Nagpuri, Khortha, Kurmali and Panchparganiya as languages in their own right and not dialects of neighboring languages. Instead, speakers almost unanimously view these four languages as Sadani languages, i.e., as closely related languages which descend from dialects of an earlier Sadani language, which no longer exists in that form. In the following section, we deal with this topic in detail and suggest, based on preliminary data, that the local tradition in fact very likely best represents the genealogical classification of these languages.

2 The status of Sadani within the Magadhan group

In order to determine to what extent the four Sadani languages form a distinct linguistic group or whether they are more closely related to neighboring Indo-Aryan languages of the region than to each other, we collected data together with native speakers for a slightly adapted version of the 100-item Swadesh list in field work for nine distinct dialects of the Sadani languages as well as for various other eastern Indo-Aryan varieties, including two dialects each for Bhojpuri and Bengali (Bangla) and one variety each for Maithili, Magahi and Angika. Further data for the sake of comparison were included for other Indo-Aryan varieties from further afield, such as one non-standard variety of both Konkani (a husband and wife from Benaulim, South Goa) and Punjabi (one speaker from Delhi), data on three dialects of the Darai language of central Nepal from the first author’s previous work, as well as standard Hindi and Nepali, totaling altogether 23 different varieties. Although this list of languages/dialects is admittedly primarily due to the availability of speakers that we were able to locate for languages not spoken in Jharkhand itself, at least one language from all three major divisions of Indo-Aryan, i.e., Intermediate and Outer Indo-Aryan as well as Western Hindi (cf. Figure 1 above), is included.

These raw data were transcribed in IPA and entered into tables. Loanwords from Persian/Arabic, English and Sanskrit were then removed. The identification of loanwords from other New Indo-Aryan languages proved to be somewhat more difficult, with the exception of the three Darai dialects, where Nepali loanwords were generally easily identifiable, although loanwords from Hindi in other languages which we were able to identify were also removed.

The loanwords which were removed from the raw data include highly common words of Persian origin (based on the data in McGregor 1997), such as Hindi (etc.) rāstā or rāh ‘road’, lāl ‘red’, bes (<beś) ‘good’, dil ‘heart’, etc., Sanskrit loans such as ɔnek ‘many’ or bɾiʃti ‘rain’ in the two Bengali (Bangla) dialects, Ranchi Sadri hiɾdʌi ‘heart’, etc. Also excluded were entries which consisted of two or more words, such as Ranchi Sadri kʰʌɽa hoʋ-ek ‘to stand (up)’ [standing become-inf], etc. Finally, as this sifting of the data occasionally resulted in some headwords having entries only for a few languages, where most of the original entries were loanwords (e.g. dil for ‘heart’ or lāl for ‘red’ in numerous languages), all headwords with fewer than 10 cognate forms were removed from the data. This reduced the number of headwords from the original 103 to 94.

The data thus collected and filtered were then analyzed with the software COG (COG 2019) by the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL),^[5] the results of which are presented in Figures 3 –6. These illustrate the analysis of the relations between the various linguistic varieties in both a UPGMA and Neighbor-Joining^[6] analysis with respect to both lexical and phonetic similarity.

Figure 3:

The genealogical relationship of various “Magadhan” languages and dialects with respect to selected Indo-Aryan varieties – Lexical similarity, UPGMA.

Figure 4:

The genealogical relationship of various “Magadhan” languages and dialects with respect to selected Indo-Aryan varieties – Lexical similarity, Neighbor-Joining.

Figure 5:

The genealogical relationship of various “Magadhan” languages and dialects with respect to selected Indo-Aryan varieties – Phonetic similarity, UPGMA.

Figure 6:

The genealogical relationship of various “Magadhan” languages and dialects with respect to selected Indo-Aryan varieties – Phonetic similarity, Neighbor-Joining.

In Figure 3, a UPGMA analysis of lexical similarity, we find three main branches within a clearly defined, compact Sadani group. In the first (the upper one of the three), Kurmali^[7] diverges from the remaining Sadani languages. This is expected since the etymology of many common lexemes in this language is unclear, and they likely represent loanwords or substrate influence from a non-Indo-Aryan/non-Dravidian/non-Munda language which is no longer spoken (see Section 3.3). Consider in this respect e.g. nuɽ- ‘eat’ or tʰanau- ‘see’ vs. the more common Magadhan (and Indo-Aryan generally) forms k ^h a- and dek ^h -, respectively, to cite just two such examples. Following the divergence of Kurmali from the rest of Sadani, we then find a two-way split between all Sadri/Nagpuri dialects and Panchparganiya on the one hand vs. the Khortha dialects on the other, which corresponds well with these authors’ own impression that Panchparganiya and Sadri are so closely related that they are perhaps best analyzed as two highly similar dialect groups, distinct from Khortha. Thus, the Sadani languages form a coherent group in Figure 3 within an equally tightly knit Magadhan group, and all Sadani languages are more closely related to one another than to any language(s) outside of this group. Outside of Magadhan, the closest relatives are the two Bangla dialects, as is to be expected. Hindi, Punjabi and Nepali also form a separate group. Konkani is, as expected, quite distant from the other languages in this tree, and the three Darai varieties occupy a position between Konkani and the rest of Indo-Aryan.

In contrast, in the Neighbor-Joining analysis of lexical similarity in Figure 4, the respective positions of Maithili, Angika, Magahi and the two Bhojpuri varieties are somewhat different from their positions in Figure. However these languages still form a clear Magadhan group which also encompasses the Sadani languages, which here as in Figure 3 form a distinct group. Note however the position of Panchparganiya within the Khortha group in Figure 4, which is highly counter-intuitive considering that it is viewed by many (including these authors) as so close to Sadri as to almost form a dialect of this language. Kurmali is also placed within the Khortha group here, again a rather counter-intuitive position considering its divergent status within Sadani. Hence, on both of these accounts, the UPGMA tree produces more expected results than the Neighbor-Joining analysis, although in both analyses Sadani forms a distinct subgroup within a coherent and distinctive Magadhan group. Outside of Magadhan, the only major difference to Figure 3 is that Nepali here no longer clusters with Hindi and Punjabi but rather with Darai, again a rather unexpected position.

Figure 5, which shows a UPGMA analysis of phonetic similarity, is virtually identical with Figure 3, the UPGMA analysis of lexical similarity, with only slight differences with respect to the internal structure of the Sadri dialects, and with respect to Nepali. With respect to the status of Sadani, we note once again that a clear-cut, tightly knit Sadani group within – but also distinct from – a larger, equally distinct Magadhan group is again confirmed by the analysis, and all Sadani languages are genealogically more closely related to one another than to any other languages.

Finally, Figure 6 presents the Neighbor-Joining tree for phonetic similarity. Here again we find a clearly distinguishable Sadani group within an equally distinct Maghadhan group, again with a somewhat counter-intuitive position within the Sadani group for both Kurmali and Panchparganiya, as in Figure 4. However, as in Figures 3 –5, Sadani in Figure 6 forms a clearly distinct group within Magadhan, and all Sadani languages are genealogicalally more closely related to one another than to any Magadhan (or other) language.

All four analyses in COG thus confirm the unity of Sadani as a distinct branch within Magadhan, despite all the finer differences shown by the different analyses, such as the position of Nepali, or the differences in the internal hierarchical structure of Magadhan and Sadani.

A closer look at the cognate and non-cognate forms proposed by the program COG reveals a number of problems, however. To begin with, all first persons singular were viewed as cognate with the exception of Konkani hãʋ, which represents an older nominative form no longer found in the other languages included in this sample, which go back to the earlier ergative. As such, its status as “non-cognate” in COG is to be expected. Problematic is the fact that forms such as Magahi or Maithili ham or hʌm, respectively, which derive from the historically plural first person forms, were also viewed as cognates with the remaining first persons singular, which derive from the historically singular forms, such as Jaldega Sadri mɔ̃ẽ or Hindi and Punjabi mɛ̃. Also unexpectedly, the two Bengali forms for the first person plural ‘we’, both amɾa, were analyzed differently: Kanchrapara Bangla amɾa was analyzed as cognate (but forming its own cognate set) with forms in other languages such as Nepali hami or Jaldega Sadri hame, but Southern Bangla amɾa was not considered cognate with the identical form in Kanchrapara Bangla.

To cite a few other examples, while forms for ‘bone’ such as haɽ and haɖɖi were correctly analyzed as cognates, Benaulim Konkani haɖ was not viewed as cognate. Similar problems were encountered elsewhere, e.g. of the various forms for ‘bark (of a tree)’, several forms such as ts ^h ala(k), ʧ ^h al, sal and ts ^h ilka were considered cognate while the (Delhi) Punjabi form ʧ ^h ʌl oddly was not. Similarly, forms such as ninda- ‘sleep’, found in various varieties, were generally recognized as cognates, cf. Garhwa Sadri, Ranchi Sadri and Jaldega Sadri ninda-ek (where -ek is the infinitival marker), which were analyzed as cognates in one cognate set, and Panchparganiya nida-e, with the infinitival marker -e, in a different cognate set. However, the almost identical Garhwa Sadri alternate form ninda-e was not considered cognate with these forms.

It is thus clear that automated tools such as COG at present cannot fully substitute for a careful manual analysis of the data within the traditional comparative method of historical linguistics by human researchers, e.g. identifying and removing loanwords and identifying (non-)cognates, etc., and COG does produce a number of false (non-)cognates. Nevertheless, as this study also shows, such a tool can be enormously useful in obtaining quick, preliminary results which can then guide further research, and although a number of false analyses did occur, the number of correct analyses was apparently large enough to balance these out, as at least the two UPGMA analyses were largely in line with these authors’ intuitions and with local opinion in Jharkhand, while the Neighbor-Joining analyses were somewhat less reliable. Automatic analyses such as those offered by COG thus present us with a further valuable tool whose potential benefit should not be under-estimated, especially when combined with traditional methods of historical linguistics.

In summary, in all of these different analyses, each with its own advantages and disadvantages, the Sadani group consisting of the languages Sadri/Nagpuri, Khortha, Kurmali and Panchparganiya is clearly recognizable as a distinct group contained within an equally distinct Magadhan group. This lends strong support to the locally held view that Sadri/Nagpuri, Panchparganiya, Khortha and Kurmali are four closely related languages, deriving from a common ancestor and distinct from other Magadhan languages.

The fact that these languages form their own distinct group and are more closely related to each other within the Sadani group than to any language or languages outside of this group thus strongly suggests that Sadri/Nagpuri cannot be viewed as a dialect of Bhojpuri and Panchparganiya, and Khortha and Kurmali cannot be viewed as dialects of Magahi, Maithili or any other language. Rather, as we argue in the following pages, this traditional linguistic classification of the Sadani languages as dialects of other Magadhan languages appears to be motivated by morphosyntactic aspects, such as the presence or absence of ergativity, or mono- vs. polypersonal verb marking, to which we now turn.

3 The Sadani languages, their speakers and their distinguishing features

In addition to the lexical and phonetic similarities between the Sadani languages discussed in Section 2, there are also a number of common structural features in all four Sadani languages, many of which are shared with most other eastern Indo-Aryan languages. To name just a few:

• Nouns in all four Sadani languages have one invariable base, i.e., there is nothing in these languages comparable to the oblique stem found in western Indo-Aryan languages which is obligatory before postpositions, while the direct stem (“direct/nominative case”) is found elsewhere.

• Almost all grammatical marking within the NP such as number and case is enclitic, not suffixal, as it is in western Indo-Aryan languages such as Hindi, Marathi, or Konkani.

• All four Sadani languages have numeral classifiers, most of which can also be used post-nominally to mark the NP as definite or referential.

• All four Sadani languages also have a vigesimal system (e.g. kori or kaʈh ‘score; 20’), likely from Austro-Asiatic, often in addition to the inherited Indo-Aryan form bis ‘20’.

Nevertheless, the four members of the Sadani group also differ from one another somewhat with respect to the lexicon and morphosyntax. For example, some languages have morphological ergativity while others do not; some show an alienable/inalienable distinction with attributive possession while others do not; some have polypersonal marking on the verb (i.e., agreement with more than one argument/speech-act participant) while others do not, etc. As we argue in Sections 3.1–3.4, such differences most likely arose through the different contact scenarios that each of these four languages finds itself in.

In the following sections we present a brief overview of some of the distinctive features of each individual language and its respective contact situation, in an attempt to account for the differences between the four languages. For ease of reference, Figure 7 provides an overview of the approximate relative positions of the various Munda languages of the region, from Anderson (2007: 7), many of which are also contact languages of the Sadani group. Kurukh/Kurux, the main Dravidian language of the region (not shown in Figure 7), is predominantly spoken throughout the northern half of western Jharkhand, corresponding roughly with the northern half of the Sadri-speaking area, but also in contact with all three other Sadani languages to a lesser extent (see again Figure 1).

Figure 7:

The approximate relative positions of the Munda languages (from Anderson 2007: 7, reprinted with kind permission by Mouton de Gruyter).

4 Summary and conclusions

The preceding sections have shown that Sadri/Nagpuri, Khortha, Kurmali and Panchparganiya form a clear, compact genealogical Sadani group within the Magadhan sub-group of Indo-Aryan, and all four of the quantitative analyses undertaken, i.e., UPGMA and Neighbor-Joining for both lexical and phonetic similarity, show that all four Sadani languages are more closely related to one another than to any other language in the family, including the other Magadhan languages. This supports the locally held view that these four languages all descend from a single “mother” language which no longer exists in that form, i.e., Sadani, which is why these four languages are referred to collectively as such in the region. This contradicts the classification by most researchers from outside the region, who have tended to view Sadri/Nagpuri as a dialect of Bhojpuri and the other Sadani languages as dialects of Magahi or Maithili, a view which we believe is primarily due to various morphosyntactic features, such as the presence or absence of polypersonal verb marking, etc.

We argue in the preceding sections that it was primarily the respective contact situation of each of these four languages which led to many of the differences between them which we find today. These are summarized in Table 2.

Under the assumption that the earliest Sadani language had morphological ergativity when it was brought to this region, since ergativity is found in three out of four modern Sadani languages, we can say that Sadri/Nagpuri has likely lost ergativity due to its widespread use as a lingua franca, which is conducive to “simplification,” especially when none of the contact languages have ergativity. Also, the general restriction to agents expressed by lexical nouns and the past tense in the other three languages – with different extensions and restrictions in each language – suggests that ergative marking was restricted to agentive nouns in the past tense in an earlier stage of Sadani.

However, Sadri/Nagpuri has not only lost complexity, it has also gained complexity in that the distinction between alienable and inalienable attributive possession, found in all Munda languages, both north and south, is now found in this language, albeit only with a third person possessor. Also, through the loss of the vowel /a/ under certain conditions, a new verbal category has been created in the present tense in Sadri, namely the narrative, which closely mirrors the distribution of the homophonous finite marker in North Munda. Finally, Sadri shows no high number of loanwords from a single language, as is to be expected in such a multilingual environment. Instead it itself serves as the donor language for countless loans in its contact languages.

In contrast, Khortha has quite a large number of borrowings from Santali, its primary contact language, while Kurmali has several prominent loans from an unknown language which no longer appears to be spoken, as well as a smaller number of Santali loanwords, its primary contact language at present. Otherwise, Khortha and Kurmali are quite conservative, as both retain morphological ergativity but have not developed an alienable/inalienable distinction in attributive possession nor a narrative category.

Panchparganiya, the Sadani language with the least amount of contact of all, is unsurprisingly also the most conservative: It does not have a noticeably large number of loans from a single donor language, it has retained morphological ergativity, and it has not developed an alienable/inalienable distinction in attributive possession, nor a category similar to the narrative in Sadri/Nagpuri.

With respect to polypersonal marking on the verb, it is not entirely clear whether this type of marking was already present when Sadani was first brought to Jharkhand, so that we cannot say with certainty whether it represents an innovation or a retention from older stages of Sadani. Within Indo-Aryan it is largely, if not entirely, restricted to Magadhan, but it is not found universally within this group, even outside of Sadani. For example, while it is found in several non-Sadani Magadhan languages, such as Maithili, Magahi, etc., as well as Khortha and Kurmali, it is not found e.g. in Bhojpuri, nor in Sadri/Nagpuri or Panchparganiya. However, the distribution of this type of marking within Sadani may give us some clues as to its origin.

The lack of polypersonal marking in a lingua franca such as Sadri/Nagpuri is hardly surprising, as it is used by speakers of several different L1’s, many of which do have polypersonal marking, but some of which do not. However, the lack of this type of marking in Panchparganiya as well, which is otherwise quite conservative with respect to morphosyntax, suggests that polypersonal marking is an innovation in Khortha and Kurmali.

In this respect it is important to note that Khortha and Kurmali are the two languages with contact largely restricted to one major North Munda language, Santali, where polypersonal marking is very productive, and that to the north of these, directly bordering the Khortha-speaking region, Magahi is spoken, where polypersonal marking is also found. It seems likely that it is precisely this feature, which Khortha (and Kurmali) shares with Magahi, which has led many researchers to consider Khortha to be a dialect of Magahi instead of belonging to an independent Sadani group.

Thus, polypersonal marking in Magadhan languages appears to be an areal feature, primarily found in the eastern Magadhan languages, including Khortha and Kurmali, and seems to be a direct result of intense contact between the Magadhan languages and North Munda, from where it has spread to other languages.^[13] Further work will hopefully shed more light on this issue.

In summary, a comparison of all five features investigated here for all four Sadani languages reveals much about earlier stages of Sadani, namely that:

• It possessed ergativity, which was likely restricted to agents expressed by nouns and found only in the past tense. From this origin it spread in different languages to include e.g. the first person singular in Khortha, but only in the perfective, and also to the present tense in Kurmali, but still with nouns only. In Panchparganiya it is still restricted to nouns and the past tense, but also only with focused agents;

• polypersonal marking most likely represents an innovation in Khortha and Kurmali, i.e., those languages with one primary contact language, namely a North Munda language – a tendency which is reinforced by areal pressure;

• other innovations, such as a distinction between alienable and inalienable attributive possession and a productive narrative category, are only found in Sadri, due to its extensive use as a lingua franca;

• Panchparganiya on the other hand, historically somewhat of a hermit with respect to contact, is also the most conservative with respect to its morphosyntax and lexicon.

A number of questions still remain. For example, how did a typical North Munda feature such as the distribution of /a/ in Sadri/Nagpuri not also arise in Khortha and Kurmali, the two Sadani languages most closely in contact with primarily a single North Munda language – whereas it did in Sadri/Nagpuri, which also has close contact with Kharia (South Munda) and Dravidian languages, none of which has this trait? Instead, Sadri/Nagpuri alone has exploited the presence vs. absence of the final /a/ in the present tense to express a modal/pragmatic category which neither of the other two languages did. A possible answer lies in the fact that the present tense currently found in these two languages evolved from an entirely different, periphrastic construction, likely an older progressive category, so that there likely never was an/a/ or /la/ in the present tense in Khortha and Kurmali, i.e., a distinction of this type could not have become productive there. However, further work is required to confirm this.

In fact, much more work is necessary on all four Sadani languages and on the Munda and Dravidian languages of this region as well, as we still know virtually nothing of the differences in language use among the different castes and ethnic groups in each language, nor about subtle, regionally based language differences. To give just one example, we do not know if certain ethnic groups whose traditional L1 lacks ergativity use ergative marking differently than most other speakers of Khortha, Kurmali or Panchparganiya, etc. It is hoped that further research will provide further answers to these and other questions in the near future, although it is also likely to raise new, interesting questions as well.

Abbreviations

1,2,3

Person

abl

ablative

act

active

addr

addressee

all

allative

amb

ambulative

antic

anticipatory

appl

applicative

aux

auxiliary

clf

classifier

cont

continuative

cop

copula

cvb

converb

dem

demonstrative

dist

distal

du

dual

erg

ergative

ext

extensional

f

feminine

fin

finite marker

foc

focus

fut

future

gen

genitive

imp

imperative

ind

indicative

inf

infinitive

ins

instrumental

lnk

linker

loc

locative

nar

narrative marker

np

nominal phrase

obj

object

obl

oblique

prf

perfect

pl

plural

PN

personal name

prox

proximate

prs

present

poss

possessive

pst

past

seq

sequential converb

sg

singular

subj

subjunctive

top

topic

tr

transitive

v2

‘vector verb’