The main division is into nominal words, such as nouns and pronouns, verbal words or predicates, such as verbs, quantity words, and conjunctions, and uninflected words, such as determiners. These classes are subdivided according to various factors.
The phrase indexes are tagged with lower-case letters: i, j, k, l, m, and n. They indicate the phrases that predicates refer to. There's also a 0 index, i.e. the absence of an index.
The inflection that all nouns and pronouns take is the index, which is marked by a suffix. There's also a vocative noun suffix (-Voc), which replaces the index. Nouns may take a prefix p(e)- (P-) indicating plural number.
The pronouns include:
| Base | Description | Animate | Inanimate | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Singular | Plural | Sing. | Plur. | ||||
| 1st | 2nd | 1st | 2nd | ||||
| 3- | 3rd person | nó | ná | nós | nás | né | nés |
| Dem- | demonstrative | lau | laus | lai | lais | ||
| CQ- | content question | qau | qai | ||||
| Exi- | existential quantifier | zó | zé | ||||
| Uni- | universal quantifier | ??? | ??? | ||||
| RP | relative | sá | |||||
A phrase is either a noun phrase or a pronoun and may be followed by a relative clause. A basic noun phrase begins with a determiner and ends with a noun. Noun modifiers, which are attributive clauses, come between the determiner and the noun. If the phrase is existential and a quantity word is to be used, the quantity word replaces the determiner. The plural noun prefix is used only if there's no other indication of number in the phrase.
| Def black cat-i | "the black cat" |
| Dem here P-elephant-i | "these elephants" |
| [3] white elephant-i | "3 white elephants" |
The determiners are:
| Word | Tag | Description |
|---|---|---|
| - | NR | non-referential |
| ban | UNI | universal quantifier |
| zu | EXI | existential quantifier |
| xi | SPC | indefinite, specific |
| ne | DEF | definite |
| la | DEM | demonstrative |
| qa | CQ | content question |
| - | PN | proper noun |
A relative clause begins with the particle BRC and ends with the particle ERC; the clause in between is like a main clause except that the relative pronoun RP appears where the relativized noun phrase would have been. The index on the pronoun indicates the role it has within the relative clause.
Predicates are classified as verbs, quantity words, conjunctions, and adjectives. Adjectives are words that can be used as the scale of comparison and overlap the other classes.
Verbs are inflected for pluractionality, aspect, polarity, and agreement for up to 3 arguments. Aspect will be covered later.
A verb can be marked pluractional using the prefix r(e)- (Plu). It appears closest to the stem of the inflectional prefixes.
Polarity is positive (0), negative (ná-, Neg-), or affirmative (hé-, Aff-).
Note: There are no 3rd person pronominals other than indexes; the anaphoric pronouns or definite noun phrases must be used to identify references from previous sentences.
A predicate may have up to 3 arguments. The 1st argument is marked by prefix, the 2nd by suffix, and the 3rd by a second suffix. Each affix can be either an index or a pronominal. The roles for each verb argument are as follows (later sections will cover other predicates and additional pronominals):
The personal pronominals, indexes, and special pronominals are:
| 1st | 2nd | 3rd | Tag | Description | Application |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| s(u)- | -s(u) | - | 1S | 1st person singular | verbs and quantity words |
| son- | -son | - | 1XP | 1st person exclusive plural | |
| cin- | -cin | - | 1NP | 1st person inclusive plural | |
| c(i)- | -c(i) | - | 2S | 2nd person singular | |
| cé- | -cé | - | 2P | 2nd person plural | |
| - | -zí | - | Rfx | Reflexive (all persons) | verbs |
| be- | -be/u | -be/u | i | Indexes | all predicates |
| ja- | -ja/i | -ja/i | j | ||
| ka- | -ka/k | -ka/k | k | ||
| re- | -re/r | -re/r | l | ||
| mi- | -mi/m | -mi/m | m | ||
| gu- | -gu/a | -gu/a | n | ||
| - | -xu/x | - | O | Now | conjunctions |
| - | -na/n | - | T | At that time | |
| - | -tá | - | S | At such a time | |
| - | - | -tó | Sat | degree: So, enough | adjectives of whatever class |
| - | - | -má | Vry | degree: Very | |
| - | - | -ly | Sly | degree: Slightly | |
| - | - | -ké | SD | degree: the Same Day | adjectival conjunctions |
Quantity words such as cardinal numbers may be inflected for person and number of the whole, using the 2nd argument (see Partitive Construction). The suffixes used are the same as for verb agreement minus Rfx.
An adjective uses the 1st and 2nd arguments in the same way as the class it belongs to. In addition, the 3rd argument is used for the degree of comparison.
It makes a difference whether the verb modifies a noun (attributive) or not (free). If free, each argument is either a pronominal or an index (the 0 index has 2 interpretations: an adjacent argument or an unspecified one). If attributive, the marking is the same, but the interpretation is different: the first 0 index encountered is coreferential with the head noun, not unspecified or adjacent. At least one argument must be a 0 index.
A clause consists of one or more free verbs with their arguments. An argument may be a phrase, a pronoun, or a nominalized clause. If an argument appears adjacent to its verb (before if the prefixed argument, after otherwise), both verb and argument may take the 0 index. However, this makes the argument inaccesible to other verbs in the sentence. A main clause may also have adjuncts and/or coordinate clauses after it; these are introduced by various conjunctions.
| Spc man eat-i i-raw Def meat-i | "This man ate the meat raw." |
| Def cat-i 1XP-put-i i-in Def house. | "We put the cat in the house." |
A nominalized clause begins with the nominalizing pronoun Nom.
| PN John-j Def elephant-i j-want Nom j-see-i. |
| "John wants to see the elephant." |
| Def building-i Nom-j demolish-i PN Mary watched-j. |
| "Mary watched the demolition of the building." |
The theme may have a 0 index only if the only thing between it and the verb is a 0 index recipient phrase.
| Def woman give Def boy [1] book. |
| "The woman gave the boy a book." |
page started: 2013.Apr.29 Mon
current date: 2013.May.02 Thu
content and form originated by qiihoskeh
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