ထနော့သဒ္ဒါ

Htanaw grammar

နဲဉ်ပအ်

Numerals

Htanaw numerals are a mixture of inherited Austroasiatic and borrowed Burmese terms, with inherited numerals being used for the lower, borrowed items for higher numbers (hundred, thousand, etc.). The system is decimal, with combinations transparent and in line with other Southeast Asian numeral systems. A lower digit following a higher one is added, while a lower digit preceding a higher one functions as multiplier. The combination "four ten six" is to be interpreted as "four times ten plus six = 46". In some cases an optional နာအ် nàʔ 'with' is inserted to break up long sequences. The shape of the numerals does not change when occurring in combinations, with the exception of 'one', which appears as အာအ်း ʔaʔ as single number or as final element in a combination, but as prefixed အ ʔə- when occurring with higher digits. 10 is မကျိဉ် mə-cɪ̀ɴ, where မ mə- is a apparently the reflex of inherited Austroasiatic *moy 'one', which in other contexts has been replaced by အာအ်း ʔaʔ.

When counting money or traditional units of weight (viss 1.63 kg, tical 16.3 g),'50' is ဟာ့ခါဉ့် há-kʰáɴ '100' is အစွဲး ʔəswɛ, '200' အကွဉ်း ʔəkwɐɴ, '300' and above အုဲစွဲး ʔùi swɛ, ပီုဉ်စွဲး pɯ̀ɴ swɛ, etc.

ခွဲး kʰwɛ 'half' is added to round numbers of 1000 and above to indicate that half of the leading digit is added ("1000 half" = 1500). This use is optional and occurs only when no smaller digits follow. Note that though the pattern and the form ခွဲး kʰwɛ are obviously borrowed from Burmese, Burmese uses the same pattern only with digits from 10,000 upwards.

Classifiers are generally placed after the numerals, but appear with the nominal prefix အ ʔə- before multiples of 10, 100, and above, and before complex combinations. Note that အကွအ် ʔəkwɐ̀ʔ can be either the nominalized (independent) form of the classifier ကွအ် kwɐ̀ʔ 'CLF.animate', or the numeral prefix အ ʔə- 'one' followed by the classifier.

(၀) တိူဉ်ညာအ့် tòuɴ.ɲáʔ 0

(၁) အာအ်း ʔaʔ 1

*(၂) အဲဉ် ʔɛ̀ɴ 2

(၃) အုဲ ʔùi 3

(၄) ပီုဉ် pɯ̀ɴ 4

(၅) ထိုဉ် tʰòɴ 5

(၆) တူဉ့် túɴ 6

(၇) ပအ်း pɐʔ 7

(၈) စဲဉ် sɛ̀ɴ 8

(၉) စာဉ် sàɴ 9

(၂၀) အဲဉ်ကျိဉ် ʔɛ̀ɴ-cɪ̀ɴ 20

(၉၀) စာဉ်ကျိဉ် sàɴ-cɪ̀ɴ 90

(၅၀၀) ထိုဉ်ဖျား tʰòɴ-pʰja 500

**(၁၀၀၀၀) အထောဉ်း ʔə-tʰɔɴ 10000

(၁၀) မကျိဉ် mə-cɪ̀ɴ 10

(၁၁) မကျိဉ်အာအ်း mə-cɪ̀ɴ-ʔaʔ 11

(၁၂) မကျိဉ်အဲဉ် mə-cɪ̀ɴ-ʔɛ̀ɴ 12

(၁၃) မကျိဉ်အုဲ mə-cɪ̀ɴ-ʔùi 13

(၁၄) မကျိဉ်ပီုဉ် mə-cɪ̀ɴ-pɯ̀ɴ 14

(၁၅) မကျိဉ်ထိုဉ် mə-cɪ̀ɴ-tʰòɴ 15

(၁၆) မကျိဉ်တူဉ့် mə-cɪ̀ɴ-túɴ 16

(၁၇) မကျိဉ်ပအ်း mə-cɪ̀ɴ-pɐʔ 17

(၁၈) မကျိဉ်စဲဉ် mə-cɪ̀ɴ-sɛ̀ɴ 18

(၁၉) မကျိဉ်စာဉ် mə-cɪ̀ɴ-sàɴ 19

(၃၀) အုဲကျိဉ် ʔùi-cɪ̀ɴ 30

(၁၀၀) အဖျား ʔə-pʰja 100

(၁၀၀၀) အထောဉ် ʔə-tʰɔ̀ɴ 1000

**(၁၀၀၀၀၀) အထဲာဉ်း ʔə-tʰaiɴ 100000

*Naung Inn has အာဲဉ် ʔàiɴ for 'two'.

**In Naung Inn Htanaw, 10,000 is အတာဉ်း ʔə-tɔɴ, 100,000 အတေိဉ်း ʔə-teiɴ, more closely matching the standard Burmese pronunciation θàuɴ and θèiɴ, rather than Intha/Pa'O sʰàuɴ and sʰèiɴ, respectively.

(၅၀) ဟာ့ခါဉ့် há-kʰáɴ 50 (၁၀၀) အစွဲး ʔə-swɛ 100 (၂၀၀) အကွာဉ်း ʔə-kwaɴ 200

Pronouns

Htanaw has a basic grammatical pronoun system consisting of three persons and two numbers. Unlike in some other Palaungic languages, there is no plural/dual or inclusive/exclusive distinction. Gender is not distinguished in any person, and the 3. person pronouns are used for both animate and inanimate referents. An additional 3. person pronoun ဗေ့ bé is used to indicate a non-specific referent, roughly equivalent to English 'they, one, other people'. 3. person pronouns are unspecified in terms of coreference. In the sentence အာဉ်ပီုအ့်ကာအ်းနီုအ်အာဉ်ဖြိုအာအ်။ ʔàɴ pɯ́ʔ kaʔ nɯ̀ʔ ʔàɴ pʰrò ʔàʔ 'he said that he wasn't coming' the subjects of the main clause and subordinate clause can be coreferential or not.

Personal pronouns can be combined with demonstratives နီ့ ní 'proximal', နီုအ့် nɯ́ʔ 'medial', and နာအ့် náʔ 'distal' to indicate spatial or emotional distance or proximity.

The syntactic function of the personal pronouns is indicated by their position, rather than by their form. Preverbal pronouns are subjects, postverbal pronouns are objects. When occurring as possessor or with the locative prefix တ tə- 'at, by, on, in', some pronouns change their tone to high tone.

For the reflexive ‘self’ တို tò from Shan တူဝ် tǒ ‘body’ or ကို(တာဲဉ်) kò(-tàiɴ) ‘body’ from Burmese ကိုယ်(တိုင်) ko(-taiɴ) is used (or a combination of both, tò kò-tàiɴ). There is no tone change in the locative/possessive form of the reflexive.

နာဉ်စား

အို့ ʔó 'I, me'

အေ့ ʔé 'we, us'

မီုအ် mɯ̀ʔ 'you (sg)'

ပီု့ pɯ́ 'you (pl)'

အာဉ် ʔàɴ 'he, she, it'

ခီုအ် kʰɯ̀ʔ 'they'

ဗေ့ bé 'they, other people, someone'

တအို့ tə-ʔó 'by me'

တအေ့ tə-ʔé 'by us'

တမီုအ့် tə-mɯ́ʔ 'by you (sg)'

တပီု့ tə-pɯ́ 'by you (pl)'

တအာဉ် tə-ʔàn 'by him, her, it'

တခီုအ့် tə-kʰɯ́ʔ 'by them'

တဗေ့ tə-bé 'by them, someone, other people'

Nouns - coming soon

Classifiers - coming soon

Demonstratives - coming soon

Interrogatives - coming soon

Verbs - coming soon

Grammatical tones and tone sandhi - coming soon