For the most part, I'm treating clitics as affixes here, including them in morphology rather than in syntax.
The main word classes are nouns, verbs, and quantity words. Nouns represent entities while verbs represent resulting states, originating states, and current states or actions. There are also pronouns, conjunctions, and other particles.
A noun is either animate or inanimate and either obligatorily possessed or optionally possessed. Some inanimate nouns are mass nouns rather than count nouns. There are also proper nouns.
A verb is either static or dynamic and either univalent or bivalent.
Nouns and pronouns are inflected for case. The 0-marked case is the absolutive, used for patients, copatients, subjects, and predicate nominals.
| Prefix | Tag | Name | Usage |
|---|---|---|---|
| ni- | Erg- | ergative | cause |
| go- | Gen- | genitive | possessor |
| o- | Voc- | vocative | addressee |
| ben- | Ben- | benefactive | beneficiary |
| mal- | Mal- | malefactive | maleficiary |
Determiners are appended to the noun. Definite and specific indefinite nouns are unmarked. A possessive personal pronoun (covered later) may be appended instead of the determiner.
| Suffix | Tag | Description |
|---|---|---|
| -ho | -NR | non-referential |
| -ča | -CQ | content question |
| -kue | -Prox | proximal demonstrative |
| -pio | -Medi | medial demonstrative |
| -ta | -Dist | distal demonstrative |
| -pao | -Uni | universal quantifier |
| -qou | -Exi | existential quantifier |
| -jou | -Nul | nullar quantifier |
0-derivation occurs when a prefix belonging to one class is applied to a word of another class; otherwise, derivation uses explicit prefixes.
Noun-to-verb derivations include dy-, which refers to the location of the entity, and na-, which derives bivalent verbs from body part terms and other obligatorily possessed nouns. It also derives univalent verbs from optionally possessed nouns.
There's also the prefix ba-, which derives bivalent verbs from certain prefixes and particles.
Verb-to-noun derivations include the nominalizer šo-, which produces action nominals, the clause complementizer žu-, and the superlative prefixes wes- (animate) and wen- (inanimate). The prefixes wes- and wen- also derive the ordinal numbers from the corresponding cardinal numbers. There are also a few participant nominalizers; these tend to be lexicalized:
| Prefix | Gender | Participant |
|---|---|---|
| hi- | animate | patient |
| po- | inanimate | patient |
| ga- | animate | copatient |
| li- | inanimate | copatient |
| sy- | animate | agent (ergative-instrumental) |
| fe- | inanimate | intrument (ergative-instrumental) |
Compounds are Head-Modifier.
Verb prefixes go in 1 of 5 slots, slot 4 being closest to the root. If none of the following appear, the verb represents a current state, current action, or partial result.
| Slot | Prefix | Tag | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | jan- | Not- | outside (not in) state |
| 1 | dyf- | Aft- | no longer in state |
| 1 | lou- | Bef- | not yet in state |
| 2 | ki- | Aor- | moment of completion |
| 2 | ze- | Prf- | completed result |
| 2 | nun- | Con- | attempted result |
| 2 | dox- | Fal- | failed result |
| 3 | bi- | Inc- | transition to state |
| 3 | du- | Ori- | originating state |
Participles are formed using the prefix mo- (Att-), which appears in slot 0.
There are 5 pairs of modal auxiliaries: epistemic, social, volitive, deontic, and natural. The members of each pair are necessity and possibility. The epistemic auxiliaries are particles preceding the verb (covered later), while the others are prefixes appearing in slot 2. Only one modal may appear per verb.
| Modality | Necessity | Possibility | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Morph | Tag | Gloss | Morph | Tag | Gloss | |
| Social | xuei- | SN- | supposed to | dur- | SP- | ? |
| Volitive | xou- | VN- | want to | bioš- | VP- | willing to |
| Deontic | piat- | DN- | required to | zar- | DP- | permitted to |
| Natural | hys- | NN- | ? | čou- | NP- | able to |
These prefixes apply to adjectival verbs. They all appear in slot 4.
| Prefix | Tag | Description |
|---|---|---|
| tas- | Max- | high degree |
| fiq- | Min- | low degree |
| bor- | GT- | greater degree |
| xin- | LT- | lesser degree |
| gal- | Eq- | equal degree |
| zao- | Sat- | satisfactive degree |
Personal pronouns may act as possessors in which case, they're appended to the noun without any genitive case marker. Personal pronouns acting as patients of univalent verbs and copatients of bivalent verbs are appended to the verb. Personal pronouns acting as patients of bivalent verbs may be appended following an appended copatient; otherwise, they're independent. Personal pronouns are always independent when used as predicates, subjects of definition and identity clauses, or when ergative, benefactive, or malefactive.
| Pron. | Tag | Description |
|---|---|---|
| mi | 1S | 1st person singular |
| ma | 1P | 1st person plural |
| ko | 2 | 2nd person |
| ti | Rfx | reflexive (any person) |
| tu | 3P | 3rd person most recent patient |
| ce | 3A | 3rd person animate |
| ne | 3I | 3rd person inanimate |
| la | R | relative pronoun |
| ha | U | unspecified |
The reflexive pronoun coreferences an ergative or genitive phrase or pronoun in the same clause. The most recent patient pronoun coreferences the patient argument of the host, matrix, or preceding clause.
The other pronouns are the demonstratives and the content question pronouns. As with nouns, number is optional and not marked morphologically.
| Anim. | Inan. | Description |
|---|---|---|
| čas | čan | content question |
| kues | kuen | proximal demonstrative |
| pios | pion | medial demonstrative |
| tas | tan | distal demonstrative |
| bentaeko |
|---|
| ben-tae-ko |
| Ben-father-2 |
| "for your father" |
| janzarlypko. |
|---|
| jan-zar-lyp-ko |
| Not-DP-run-2 |
| "You're not permitted to run." |
page started: 2014.Jan.04 Sat
current date: 2014.Jan.19 Sun
content and form originated by qiihoskeh
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