Legend: Definitions, Terms, <Text>, «apa», -Tags-, and "Glosses".
When the tense-mood-aspect of a word with no particle is omitted, relative realis non-perfect is used. The table shows the interpretation of this for each class under Default. In an absolute present context, the aoristic becomes absolute past; otherwise, the tense-mood-aspect is relative present.
| Label | Name | Default | Examples | Group |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| V_N | Inherent | permanent | "mother", "hand" | Inherent |
| V_B | Binary | stative | "see", "in", "here" | State |
| V_S | Scalar | stative | "hot" | |
| V_C | Culminating | progressive | "cook" | Process |
| V_U | Unitizable | progressive | "walk", "eat" | |
| V_E | Event | aoristic | "break" | Event |
Each verb belongs to an argument structure class. The classes are mostly the same syntactically, but differ semantically. There are 3 argument roles: alpha, beta, and gamma, such that alpha > beta (see Voice).
| Label | Name | Gamma Role | Beta Role | Alpha Role | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| V1_ | Quantity | - | Quantified | - | "16" |
| V2_ | Descriptive | - | Descriptee | Cause | "hot" |
| Actional | - | Route | Actor | "walk" | |
| Relational | - | Location | Locatee | "in" | |
| Possessive | - | Possessum | Possessor | "mother" | |
| Perceptual | - | Target | Experiencer | "see" | |
| Transitive | - | Patient | Agent | "eat" | |
| V3_ | Trivalent | Reported Text | Addressee | Speaker | "say" |
These apply only to nouns and verbs ending in letters.
| Digit | After Noun | After Verb | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | negation | negation | |
| 1 | mass -> count [1] | Verb-to-Verb Derivations | |
| 2 | dual or pair | ||
| 3 | plural or collective | ||
| 4 | possessor[2] | ||
| 5 | gender override | Verb-to-Noun Derivations | |
| 6 | |||
| 7 | |||
| 8 | - | ||
| 9 | - | scalar tolerance | |
| [1] + measurement unit root | |||
| [2] Noun-to-Noun Derivation | |||
| Suffix | Name | Description | Base Type | Result Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Singulative | a single unit of the process | Unitizable | Event |
| 1 | Inceptive | the start of the process | Culminating | Event |
| 1 | Inceptive | Scalar | Event | |
| 2 | Culminative | the end of the process | Culminating | Event |
| 2 | Culminative | Scalar | Event | |
| 3 | Inchoative | entry to the state | Scalar, some Binary | Culminating |
| 3 | Autocausative | (lexical) | some Binary | Culminating |
| 4 | Originative | exit from the state | Binary | Culminating |
| Suffix | Name | Gender | Base |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | Animate | animate | some verbs |
| 6 | Inanimate | inanimate | |
| 7 | Location | location | |
| 8a | Agent | animate | most verbs |
| 8i | Instrument | inanimate | |
| 8l | Location | location | |
| 8p | Patient | animate or inanimate | |
| 8r | Product | inanimate |
Most nouns take the numeric number suffixes shown in the Single Digit Usage table. However, if the noun itself is numeric, d is used for dual and p for plural, e.g. 1d is 1st person exclusive dual (note that 3 inclusive person is dual without the suffix).
The possessor noun formed by appending 4 to a noun is prefixed to the possessum noun. Unless the possessor is based on a personal noun, the possessor is non-referential, e.g. wn4shw2 "pair of women's shoes" versus 1d4cat "our cat". An unmodifed personal noun can be used directly as a possessor, e.g. 2grdn "your garden".
The expected gender of a noun can be changed by a gender override suffix, e.g. tgr6 might be used for referring to a stone tiger.
Some verbs are derived from related nouns using null derivation, e.g. "feed" from "food". Kinship and body part verbs are also formed this way.
Whole numbers are verbs formed as decimal digit strings with the most-significant digit first. Components of compound numbers are formed using alphabetic suffixes, shown in the table below. The digit 0 is used to separate alphabetic components, e.g. pi0b "-pi". The order of components is (power) (denominator) base (sign) (range), e.g. 2p3d4b "-400/3", 3r1234a "+1.234", and 40b0g "> -40".
| Suffix | Name | Description |
|---|---|---|
| a | Above | positive number |
| b | Below | negative number |
| d | Divisor | denominator |
| g | Greater Than | a range of values > N |
| l | Less Than | a range of values < N |
| n | Not Equal | a range of values excluding N |
| o | Ordinal | makes natural number N into ordinal number |
| p | Left | N x positive power of 10 |
| r | Right | N x negative power of 10 |
page started: 2022.Feb.18 Fri
current date: 2022.Feb.27 Sun
content and form originated by qiihoskeh
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