Egophoricity in Ubghuu

The categories marked on the Ubghuu verb are somewhat foreign to speakers of European languages. While its straightforward perfective-imperfective aspect distinction will feel familiar, scholars unfamiliar with similar categories in Caucasian or Himalayan languages will require some introduction to their use and analysis. These categories include version and most importantly egophoricity.

Egophoricity is the now standard name for a grammatical category that, in its broadest sense, encodes whether the speaker has privileged access to the information they are communicating. How this is interpreted in practice varies strongly by language and mostly also within a language by construction. Ubghuu is no exception to the latter, with the conditions for egophoric marking varying by voice, as well as lexical-semantic factors.

Marking

The Ubghuu verb is highly synthetic, indicating four inflectional categories as well as head-marking many things accomplished by oblique markers in other languages. Verbs take one prefix, and a multitude of suffixes. Egophoricity is marked by the prefix, so we will focus on that here.

The voice prefix is a polyexponential marker indicating voice (transitive active, transitive inverse, intransitive and stative) and egophoricity (egophoric or allophoric) in one series, and voice only in the other. Whether the verb is marked prefixally for egophoricity determines, in Ubghuu, if a verb is considered finite or not. ("Prefixally" because there is a suffix -aa that attaches to any egophoric intransitive verb.) The forms of the finite prefix are as follows:

	Egophoric	Allophoric
Transitive	ʔdzi-	ʔgi-
Inverse	wa-	tho-
Intransitive	ya-	ʔi-
Stative	zì-	ghè-

Which voice is used when depends on the agency of the subject, which is always the most animate constituent. The marking of the verb as egophoric then requires two things: first, the egophoric locus (usually the speaker, but see later) and the subject must coincide, and second, in the active voices, the subject must have acted volitionally, and in the inverse voices, they must have somehow experienced the situation in a way that third parties could not.

As an example, we will consider the prototypical transitive verb "hit". A typical sentence might be:
ʔdziláákhíi
ʔdzi-TR.EGO-lákhhit.REAL-ii-PFV.REAL
"I hit him."

This is mostly the same as the English translation equivalent, but with the subtle distinction that the egophoric form precludes a reading in which the hitting was accidental. To express this, one would say:
(kɔ́ɔ́ ŋa) ʔgilákhíiʂ
kɔ́ɔ́1s ŋaTOP ʔgi-TR.ALLO-láákhhit.REAL-ii-PFV.REAL-ʂ-DIR

Since the agent was not fully in control of their actions, they are considered to be epistemically an observer. Note how the sentence is marked with an evidentiality clitic in when the allophoric form is used, which would be ungrammatical with the egophoric form.

If the speaker is the one being hit, on the other hand, then in normal cases the egophoric inverse would be used:
walákhíi
wa-TR.INV.EGO-láákhhit.REAL-ii-PFV.REAL

"He hit me."

Since being hit usually implies feeling the pain, using the allophoric inverse is possible only where the speaker is dazed or unconscious:
tholáákhphíyíʔam
tho-TR.INV.ALLO-láákhhit.REAL-phí-down-ii-PFV.REAL-ʔam-INFER
"He must have knocked me out."

With intransitive verbs, the choice of prefix depends on similar factors. In essence, Ubghuu behaves like a split-S language here: a more agent-like intransitive S takes the active prefix, a more patient-like the inverse. For example:

yahų́ų́váa
ya-ITR.EGO-ŋúbwalk.REAL-∅-IPFV-aa-ITR.EGO
"I am walking."

zìdhoowáa
zì-STAT.EGO-dóófeel_relaxed-∅-IPFV-aa-ITR.EGO
"I feel relaxed."

Shifts of the egophoric locus
The egophoric locus is usually the same as the speaker, but it can shift in some discourse contexts. In particular, reported speech and questions can change it to third and second persons, respectively. To ask someone for permission to do something, for instance, a construction such as the following is used:

Ziibááwáa bho kɔ́ɔ́ maàŋ bhukhoolophíi?
zì-STAT.EGO-íbáfeel_good-∅-IPFV-we-Q-aa-ITR.EGO bhoCMPL kɔ́ɔ́1s mààthis-(e)ŋ-LOC b-PURP-u-CONJ-khoolsit.IRR-phí-down-∅-IPFV
"May I sit here?/Is it fine with you if I sit here?"

While the conjunct verb is not prefixally marked for egophoricity, note that this verb would take -aa if it were egophoric. Similar conditions apply in reported speech:

ʔdzilákhííyɔq (ʔivomii)
ʔdzi-TR.EGO-láákhhit.REAL-ii-PFV.REAL-yɔq-QUOT ʔi-ITR.ALLO-vomsay.REAL—ii-PFV.REAL

"He_i said that he_i hit him_j."