Legend: Definitions, Terms, <Text>, «apa», -Tags-, and "Glosses".
The syntactical word classes are verbs, numbers, determiners, pronouns, conjunctions, brackets, and particles. In addition to having action types, verbs are divided into argument structure classes.
| Label | Name | Subject Role | Object Role |
|---|---|---|---|
| _1_ | Univalent | Description | - |
| Locatee | - | ||
| _2_ | Transitive | Agent | Patient |
| Perceiver | Image | ||
| Actor | Route | ||
| Donor | Theme | ||
| Cause | Descriptee | ||
| Cause | Locatee | ||
| _3_ | Relational | Location | Locatee |
| _4_ | Possessive | Possessum | Possessor |
The causative applies to univalent verbs and moves the descriptee or locatee to object while adding the cause as subject (so that these stems act like transitive ones). The causative also applies to relational verbs and demotes the location to a locative argument while adding the cause as subject.
The 2 major constituents are the determiner construction and the verb construction; either of these can be the top-level constituent.
A determiner construction consists of a determiner followed by an optional quantity + any number of verb constructions. Each determiner construction is terminated by an enclitic closing bracket particle; there's one for each nesting level.
| =k | B0 | Outermost |
| =x(u) | B1 | |
| =tl(u) | B2 |
A verb construction consists of a verb followed by optional adverbs + any number of arguments (limited by the set of cases). The arguments may appear in any order. Each argument is either a pronoun or a determiner construction. A verb construction is either predicative or attributive. It's predicative if it's either the first one of the sentence or the first one following a conjunction; otherwise, it's attributive.
The subject of each verb construction is specified by the determiner construction immediately enclosing the verb construction. However, this may be null for the main constituent, marking either an impersonal sentence or an imperative one. The semantic role of the subject with respect to each verb is specified by the verb's case. If none, the subject takes the subject role and the object (i.e. the null case argument) takes the object role. The inverse case swaps the subject and object roles. Any other verb case promotes the corresponding oblique (marked case argument) role to subject, omitting or demoting the original subject.
An imperative construction denotes an immediate command and has an implicit 2nd person subject while a jussive construction denotes a deferred command or exhortation and has a required subject specifying who is to carry out the action. In both cases, the construction is the main one of the (possibly quoted) sentence. The verb, which must be dynamic and have an agent-like subject, takes the present aoristic ending. The object (as usual) is optional.
The polar question particle cuu PQ appears at the beginning of all yes/no question sentences. Content questions have the same form as declarations except for the appearance of some content question word (not fronted).
A determiner construction containing a single predicative verb construction denotes the existence of the verb construction's referent.
A participant compound is the type of determiner construction that denotes compound referents. A given compound is either aggregative, denoting the union of component referents, or preclusive, selecting exactly one of the components. Each component is denoted by the object of a conjunctive verb construction. The verb used in the constructions determines the type of compound; there should be at least 2 constructions, with the same verb used for all components. The forms of the verbs are direct and present tense and the determiner is indefinite.
| Cite | Tag | Name |
|---|---|---|
| tego | Agg | Aggregative |
| satlo | Pre | Preclusive |
A genitive determiner construction is either possessive or partitive. There are no special possessive constructions; instead, some possessive verb is used, either in apposition to a non-possessive verb or by itself, as in the case of kinship and body part terms. A partitive denotes a subset of some whole, the whole being expressed as the object of the verb kalo Par; this object must be referential and non-singular.
A modifier immediately precedes the modified word and replaces the object. In most cases, the modifier is implicitly non-referential. However, implicitly definite modifiers are used in constructing compound kinship terms. There may be multiple modifiers and the required object is that of the 1st modifier.
The copula jo Cop is used for identity and definition, but not existence. A definition denotes a proposition where the subject's referent is a subset of the object's referent while the referents of an identity are the same.
A modal particle, where needed, appears at the beginning of the sentence, but after the polar question particle, if it appears.
| Word | Tag | Name |
|---|---|---|
| hex(u) | EN | Epistemic Necessity |
| humu | EP | Epistemic Possibility |
| xibu | Wit | Witnessed |
| patl(u) | Rep | Reported |
| baq(u) | Ctf | Contrafactual |
page started: 2023.Mar.25 Sat
current date: 2023.Mar.27 Mon
content and form originated by qiihoskeh
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