The imperative mood is used for commands, with the agentive phrase specifying the person(s) commanded; if no agentive argument is present, the 2nd person of indefinite number is implied. The agentive argument may also be something other than 2nd person. If it's the inclusive person, the clause is hortative. If it's the 3rd person, the clause is jussive. If it's the 1st person, the clause is jussive, or possibly performative with certain verbs.
kuro!
"Run!"
cakanto!
"Let's sing!"
The subjunctive mood is primarily used in the complement clauses of certain auxiliary verbs, such as ker- "want". It's also used in result clause to indicate a potential result and has an optative interpretation in main clauses.
mil cik keri elefanta tivide.
"This child wants you to see the elephants."
The past, present, and future tense suffixes have different interprations depending on the form they occur in, the type of verb, and the type of clause or construct the verb appears in. They represent absolute tense in main clauses and relative clauses and relative tense in complement clauses and adjunct clauses. They represent aspects on depictive, resultative, and participial forms. For static verbs, the retrospective is a resulting state or possibly just a state; the progressive is a transition to that state.
The contrafactual is used in both condition and conclusion clauses.
| Tense | Condition Gloss | Conclusion Gloss |
|---|---|---|
| past | "if Y had Xed" | "Y would have Xed" |
| present | "if Y were Xing" | "Y would be Xing" |
| future | "if Y Xed" | "Y would X" |
in gi tiponofrakta, milponohaxi.
"If you hadn't broken it, I wouldn't be angry at you."
There's an argument hierarchy:
Prefix > NounPhrase > Coreference
Proximate > Obviative > Inanimate
Direct alignment means that the argument higher in the hierarchy "acts on" the argument lower in the hierarchy while inverse alignment means that the argument lower in the hierarchy "acts on" the argument higher in the hierarchy. With reflexive alignment, there's only one argument, which "acts on" itself.
page started: 2012.Aug.05 Sun
current date: 2012.Aug.07 Tue
content and form originated by qiihoskeh
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