Legend: Definitions, Terms, <Text>, [IPA], -Tags-, and "Glosses".
The word stem classes are verb, adjective, relational word, noun, pronoun, superlative, ordinal number, quantity word, and particle; only verbs, adjectives, and relational words are inflected. There's no agreement morphology.
Verbs, adjectives, and relational words are inflected for polarity and aspect. They also distinguish forms that modify phrases and forms that head clauses.
Morphological polarity is either positive (unmarked) or negative marked by -Neg in the 1st suffix slot. Polar questions are handled by syntax.
Aspect may be marked by a suffix in the 2nd slot; the aspects are shown in the following table:
| Suffix | Tag | Aspect |
|---|---|---|
| - | -Prf | Perfect-stative |
| - | -Pro | Progressive-prospective |
| - | -Aor | Aoristic |
| - | -Exp | Experiential |
Each verb stem has an implicit action type which determines what aspect is in effect when no aspect suffix appears. All adjective and relational word stems are static.
| Name | Unmarked Aspect |
|---|---|
| Static | Perfect-stative |
| Dynamic | Progressive-prospective |
| Telic | Aoristic |
The 3rd inflectional slot determines the syntactical class of the verb, adjective, or relational word stem. The participle forms are those modifying phrases while the finite forms appear as clause heads. Finite forms are unmarked and participles are marked by suffixes, shown in the following table:
| Suffix | Tag | Name | Stem |
|---|---|---|---|
| - | -Pas | Passive | verb |
| - | -Ant | Antipassive | |
| - | -Att | Attributive | adjective |
| - | -Att | Attributive | relational word |
Derivation is accomplished by suffixing and compounding. While compounding uses a head-modifier order (following the syntax), suffixes are modified by roots.
Noun stems consist of 2 syllables, the 2nd of which is always CV. For some (specifically participant nouns), the 1st syllable is a verb root while for others, it may be an adjective or relational word root or just part of the noun.
There are also suffixes that derive verbs, such as the causative -Caus which applies to adjective roots and the autocausative -Auto which applies to verb and relational word roots.
The superlative suffix -Sup derives superlatives from adjective roots and the ordinal suffix -Ord derives ordinal numbers from cardinal numbers.
page started: 2017.Apr.26 Wed
current date: 2017.Apr.27 Thu
content and form originated by qiihoskeh
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