Legend: Definitions, Terms, <Text>, [IPA], -Tags-, and "Glosses".
A basic sentence may be a command, a statement, content question, or a polar question. All of these are sequences of clauses. In addition to basic sentences, there are also conditional sentences and satisfactive sentences.
The last clause of a basic sentence is always a final clause; this may be preceded by any number of coordinate clauses. Any final or coordinate clause may be preceded by (and therefore be the host of) a subordinate clause. There are also secondary constructions, which are embedded in clauses, and participial constructions, which are embedded in noun phrases.
In a command, the final clause contains an imperative verb form; the other kinds of final clauses have other (indicative or contrafactual) final verb forms. The final clause of a polar question is terminated by the polar question particle ce (PQ) while a content question is marked as such by the presence of some content question word. Other final clauses are those of statements.
If an epistemic modal particle appears, it precedes any other post-final particle.
A conditional sentence consists of a conclusion preceded by a condition. The conclusion may be any basic sentence. The condition is also a sequence of clauses, in this case terminated by the conditional particle (If). If the conditional sentence is contrary-to-fact, both final clauses have contrafactual mood verbs; otherwise, neither do.
A satisfactive sentence consists of a satisfactive subordinate clause followed by a conditional sentence, although the condition is often omitted.
Subordinate clauses function as temporal or other adjuncts, as complement clauses, and as relative clauses.
A relative clause is internally-headed with the head noun phrase beginning with the relative determiner Rel and marked with the case appropriate to the subordinate clause. The correlative pronoun Cor appears in the host clause marked with the case appropriate to that clause. There are no headless relative clauses (i.e. those modifying null noun phrases); an indefinite pronoun is used instead of the head noun phrase for indefinite relative clauses.
A complement clause appears as the patient argument of the following host clause. Note that subordinate complement clauses are non-coreferential.
All other subordinate clauses are adjuncts.
An infinitive heads a coreferential complement clause. With most auxiliary verbs, the infinitive aspect is unmarked.
Compound tenses occur when an infinitive clause with perfect, progressive, or prospective aspect is the complement of a positive or negative existence verb (? ExPos and ? ExNeg, respectively). The tense of the existence verb is either definite past, present, or future. Some combinations, such as future prospective and present perfect are rare, the latter usually replaced by the simple indefinite past. However, in the contrafactual mood, the simple indefinite past and the future don't exist, so the present perfect and the present prospective must be used instead.
Verb negation is regularly accomplished using the negative polarity suffix (Neg). However, for a compound tense, the existence verb is negative, not the infinitive.
Negation of the copula (xi CoPos) is also suppletive (pa CoNeg).
A clause contains, at minimum, a final, coordinate, or subordinate verb form, according to which the type of clause is determined. Except for certain post-verbal particles (such as the polar question and conditional particles), the verb appears at the end of the clause. The verb may be preceded by argument phrases, secondary predicates, and various kinds of adverbs. The order of these is variable.
Note that only 1 phrase in a clause may be modified by a relative clause; that phrase must appear first.
The arguments of a clause are those required by and at least partially specified by the verb. Non-3rd person clause arguments appear as phrases only for contrastive focus, or as topics. 3rd person clause arguments may be null under certain conditions, but otherwise appear as phrases. All clauses have a proximate argument; transitive verbs also have an obviative argument. If only 1 argument phrase appears, it must be the obviative. If 2 argument phrases appear, the 1st must be the proximate.
Vocative-case phrases, which are optional, specify the addressees.
A secondary predicate is either transitive and preceded by an argument phrase or intransitive. Since oblique arguments are not specified by the verb, they must appear as transitive secondary predicates. Secondary predicates are also used as depictives and resultatives.
The adverbial phrases include adverbs of manner, degree, duration, frequency, and number of iterations or occasions. They are constructed like argument phrases except that the head noun is adverbial.
Manner adverbs are constructed using the adverbial noun ? (Man) modified by a participle (typically as a single word). If the verb is dynamic (less common), the aspect is progressive; otherwise, the aspect is perfect. However, there are exceptions: "fast" and "slow" are ?? and ?? (progressive) while "early" and "late" are ?? and ?? (perfect).
The head noun of a duration phrase is a temporal unit word. To indicate duration of a situation, it takes the instrumental case. ???
Temporal displacement is a special construction. Here, the duration phrase must be preceded by a temporal adjunct in the perfect or prospective aspect. The perfect indicates that the host event occurs later than the adjunct event by the specified duration while the prospective indicates that the host event occurs earlier than the adjunct event by the specified duration. There are a few adverbs that can appear instead of the adjunct clause. These are:
| Word | Glosses | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| "from now" | requires future host | |
| "ago" | requires past host | |
| "after", "later" | host is past or future | |
| "before", "earlier" |
The time-when adverb "now" may be used immediately before a participle to indicate absolute present tense for that participle. It's also used with the contrafactual mood.
In an identity clause, the verb is a form of the copula (Cop), which has a regular negation. The subject and complement, being interchangeable, are both phrases in the absolutive case.
In a definition clause, the verb is also a form of the copula (Cop). Here, the complement of the copula is a noun phrase with the head noun taking the non-referential form; this appears immediately before the copula. The subject of a copula is a phrase in the absolutive case.
In an existence clause, the verb is a form of either the positive (Exi) or negative (Neg) existence verb. The sole argument is either an absolutive phrase or a complement clause. The complement clause may be an infinitive clause, in which case the construction is either contrastive or a simple negation. Otherwise, the construction is used for compound tenses (limited to future or past + perfect, progressive, or prospective).
The 1st phrase in the clause is the most topical while the focused phrase (if any) is closest to the verb.
A phrase is either a noun phrase or a pronoun. Both have the attributes of gender, referentiality, number (if referential), and case.
A noun phrase is terminated by the head noun of the phrase, which supplies the attributes mentioned above. A noun phrase may begin with either a determiner or an embedded possessor phrase in the genitive case. There may be other modifiers in between the determiner or possessor and the head noun. These include quantity words (at most, 1) and participial constructions. Note that a relative clause, if any, appears before the phrase.
The determiners are shown in the following table. Some of them are related to pronouns.
| Word | Tag | Description |
|---|---|---|
| ca | Q | content question |
| 'a | U | indefinite |
| Sat | satisfactive | |
| Uni | universal quantifier | |
| ti | Prox | proximal demonstrative |
| zo | Medi | medial demonstrative |
| la | Dist | distal demonstrative |
| Rel | relative head |
A noun phrase beginning with a either the indefinite determiner or a quantity word is indefinite (but referential) while a noun phrase with no determiner or quantity word is definite (assuming the noun isn't non-referential). Most determiners can be used with nouns marked non-referential to denote a kind of entity.
A participial construction consists of a participle, which may be preceded by a non-referential noun, if the participle is transitive. Incorporated nouns and omitted transitive arguments have the obviative role. The referent of an omitted argument must be determined from context.
In addition to the head noun, appositive nouns may appear in a phrase. This is accomplished by making the noun the argument of the non-local participle of the copula (CoPos). This is also used for appositive pronouns, excluding the local pronouns, for which the unilocal participle of the copula is used.
While the pronoun or the head noun of an argument phrase can't be negated, an appositive pronoun or noun can, by using the negative of the appropriate participle.
The partitive, ordinal, and superlative constructions have the same general syntax. They all select a part from a whole, albeit by different criteria. The superlative selects according to a set-wide comparison with respect to some scalar quality, represented by a nominalized scalar verb. The ordinal selects according to position in some kind of sequence, represented by an ordinal number (which is also a noun). The partitive doesn't specify the criteria; here, the part is represented by a special partitive noun. The superlative, ordinal, or partitive noun may be immediately preceded by a quantity word specifying the cardinality of the part. The whole is denoted by a preceding phrase in the genitive case; this is either plural or headed by a mass noun.
Phrases can be conjoined. All but the last phrase in the sequence is followed by one of the phrase conjunctions: aggregate or alternate.
page started: 2016.Jul.12 Tue
current date: 2016.Jul.13 Wed
content and form originated by qiihoskeh
Table of Contents