Segments.

A Journal of
Constructed Languages

Verbal Constructions

Issue 02
July 2021
 Preface
Welcome to Segments, A Journal of Constructed Languages, and the official publication of
the /r/conlangs subreddit team. Within this journal, you will find articles produced by
members of our community.

This Issue is focused on Verbal Constructions. Conlangers were invited to submit articles
about some aspect of the verbal system in their language. As the very concept of a 'verb' is
up for debate, we opted for 'verbal constructions' to allow for descriptions of systems that
might not fit neatly into the prototypical idea of a 'verb.' We have a wonderful collection of
articles here that reflects the passion, creativity, and expertise found in our community!

We hope you enjoy this Issue, and we hope you will add your voice and perspective to future
Issues in order to make Segments an even more wonderful and comprehensive resource!

Please email [email protected] if you would like to contribute.

 Acknowledgements
We would like to send a heartfelt thank you to our wonderful community for supporting this
creative endeavor. To our contributors, without whom Segments would never be the
success that it has been! To our team of editors, who spent countless hours reading through
submissions and giving feedback and suggestions to our contributors. To our formatters,
who worked tirelessly to LATEXify documents and troubleshoot the publication. To our
readers, for their support and encouragement. To all involved with Segments, thank you for
making it the amazing community resource it is!

Peace, Love, & Conlanging

‐ Segments Team
 Segments.

Verbal
Constructions

r/conlangs
A Journal of
Constructed Languages
 Showcases

01 | New Periphrastic Verb Constructions in Middle Mtsqrveli . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

02 | Asa Serial Verb Construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

03 | The Amniosian Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

04 | Multiverb Constructions in Hapi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

05 | Lexical Aspect in Yajéé . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

06 | Being and doing in Tengkolaku . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

07 | Verbs In Qo Yah Alimecar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

08 | Bjark'ümii Verbs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

09 | Roots in gan Minhó . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

10 | Encoding modernity in a lexicon's organisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91

11 | South Aeranid Alignment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

12 | Verbal Agreement in Žskđ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119

13 | Verbs and Verbal Constructions In Akhazad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123

14 | The Flow of Mercury . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131

15 | A Unified View of the Anroo Suffix ­ra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135

16 | Case Marking Paradigms in Tabesj . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151

17 | Analyzing Phrasal and Clausal Anaphora in Hiding Waters . . . . . . . . . . . . 159

18 | The TAM System of Ahale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177

19 | Noun Incorporation in Mā Sip . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189

20 | Atłaq Mode Prefixes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199

21 | Akiatu's resultatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207

 Abbreviations

ATB Autobenefactive
1 First person
ATTR Attributive
2 Second person
AUG Augmentative
3 Third person
AUX Auxiliary
A Agent
BEFORE Before
ABL Ablative
BEN Benefactive
ABS Absolutive
C Complementizer
ABST Abstraction
CAUS Causative
ACC Accusative
CESS Cessative
ACT Active voice
CHANGE Change of State
ADC Adjunct
CL Classifier
ADESS Adessive
CMP Complement
ADJ Adjective
CMPL Completive
ADV Adverb
COL Collective Plural
AFF Affirmative
CON Construct
AGAIN Again
COND Conditional
AHM Adult Human Classifier
CONJ Conjunction
ALL Allative
CONNEG Connegative
AN Animate
COORD Coordination
AND Andative
COP Copula
ANTIP Antipassive
CP Complement phrase
AOR Aorist
CVB Converb
APPL Applicative
CYC Cyclical gender
DAT Dative FAM Familiar

DEADLINE Deadline FIN Finite Verb

DECL Declarative FOL Following stance

DEF Definite FOOD Food

DEIC Deictic FOR Formal

DEL Delimitative FRUST Frustrative

DEM Demonstrative FUT Future

DEP Dependent GEN Genitive

DESID Desiderative GER Gerund

DET Determiner GNO Gnomic

DETR Detransitivizer GNR General

DIM Diminutive H Human

DIR Direct HAB Habitual

DIS Distal/Distant HON Honorific

DO Direct Object HORT Hortative

DP Determiner phrase HYP Hypothetical Future

DS Different-subject IDEO Ideophone

DU Dual IMP Imperative

DUM Dummy pronoun INAL Inalienable Possession

DUR Durative INAN Inanimate

EGO Egophoric INC Inceptive

EMPH Emphatic INCH Inchoative

ERG Ergative INCL Inclusive

ESS Essential aspect IND Indicative

EXCL Exclusive INDEF Indefinite

EXIST Existential INF Infinitive

EXP Experiential; Direct Evidential INFER Inferential

EXPL Expletive INS Instantive

F Feminine INSTR Instrumental

INT Intermediate tense NVL Nonvolitional

INV Inverse O Object

IPFV Imperfective OBL Oblique

IRR Irrealis OBLIG Obligatory

IT Itive OBV Obviative

JUSS Jussive OPT Optative

L Location anaphor P Patient

LAT Lative PCP Participle

LCN Location Agreement PER Personal

LD Leading stance PERF Perfect

LOC Locative PERL Perlative

M Masculine PERM Permissive

MAT Material PF Patient Focus

MID Middle voice PFV Perfective

MIN Minimal PL Plural

N Neuter PLACE Place name

NAME Personal name PN Pronoun, Proper noun

NEG Negative POL Polite

NEXT Next POSS Possessive

NFEM Non-feminine POT Potential

NFOR Informal PP Preposition phrase

NFUT Non-Future PRED Classifier for predators

NML Animal Classifier PRF Perfect

NMLZ Nominalizer PRIV Privative

NOM Nominative PROG Progressive

NPR Impersonal PROP Proper article

NPST Non-Past PROX Proximal

NRZ Non-realized PRS Present

NTR Intransitive PRSP Prospective

PST Past SG Singular

PSV Passive SIM Simple aspect

PTV Partitive STAT Stative

PUNCT Punctual STR Abstraction Classifier

PV Preverb SUB Subordination particle

Q Interrogative TEL Telic

RA ‘ra’ voice TEM Temporary gender

RDP Reduplication TOP Topic

REC Recent/Near tense TR Transitive

REFL Reflexive TRI Trial

REL Relative TRN Transnumeral

REM Remote tense TRZ Transitivizer

REP Reportative V Verb

RES Resultative VBZ Verbializer

RLS Realis VIA Vialis argument

RZ Realized VID Verbal Identifier

S Subject VIS Visual

SBJV Subjunctive VOL Volitional

SEQ Sequential VP Verb phrase

Showcases
 New Periphrastic Verb
01 Constructions in Middle
Mtsqrveli

by Arcaeca

Because the verbs made too much sense before

Although the phonology of Mtsqrveli remained largely unchanged as it transitioned from

the Old stage to the Middle stage of its history, the same cannot be said about its grammar.
The chief and starkest demarcation between these two stages is found in the verbal mor-
phology, which substantially increased in complexity. The two largest such changes were,
first, the evolution of an entire new set of subject markers from lexical sources, and second,
the evolution of several new verb constructions of periphrastic origin. This article attempts
to describe the latter, with particular attention to the origin and usage of the necessitative,
future/conditional, and perfect/pluperfect constructions.

Necessitative Construction
Old Mtsqrveli had a necessitative-imperative modal suffix with two allomorphs, -dze/-
dzo—harmonizing with the vowels in the original PTZ1 root, which were rendered unpre-
dictable by sound change even by the time of Old Mtsqrveli—in order to communicate the
meaning of “need to” in a verb phrase, or to issue a command. (The Old Mtsqrveli verb
dzamova, Middle Mtsqrveli dzamoba ‘to need’ is restricted to having a noun as a comple-
ment.) In Middle Mtsqrveli this suffix has been relegated solely to marking the imperative
mood, and even then imperative forms lacking -dze/-dzo are attested, but are considered
impolite. In its place, a periphrastic construction has developed in Middle Mtsqrveli to fill
the role of the necessitative mood.

Forming the Necessitative

The periphrastic necessitative is formed by placing the main verb in its infinitive form and
placing the subject in the dative case; the indirect object, if any, switches to being marked
with the benefactive case instead of the dative:

1
Proto-Tsxri-Zani, the proto-language of the Tsxri-Zani primary language family to which Mtsqrveli belongs
(in the Tsxri branch).

Page 1
 Middle Mtsqrveli

(1) (Txas) croes šenrdzad Biat.

txas cro -es šen- rdz -ad Bia -t
1.SG.NOM.INDEF compose -1.SG.S NMLZ- send -ACC.INDEF Bia -DAT
“I write a letter to Bia.”

(2) Txsit croba šenrdzad Biaghe.

txas -it cro -ba šen- rdz -ad Bia -ghe
1.SG -DAT compose -INF NMLZ- send -ACC.INDEF Bia -BEN
“I must write a letter to Bia.”

The effect is to reduce the volitionality of the cases of all or most of the involved arguments.
This may reflect the agent being “forced” to perform the action, which diminishes their
agency.

Evolution of the Necessitative

More than agency reduction, however, a likely candidate for the origin of this construction
is simply Middle Mtsqrveli’s non-attributive possessive construction, in which the possessor
is similarly marked dative, and the possessee is marked nominative:2

(3) Adauni mdzoet tvmadavs.

ada -uni mdzo -et tv- madavs
bestow -PCP man -DAT DU- son.NOM.INDEF
“A certain (lit. given; bestowed) man had two sons.”
Or: “Two sons were a certain man’s.” (LUKE 15:11)

The necessitative periphrasis can therefore be reinterpreted as at its core a possessive

construction whose possessee has been substituted for Middle Mtsqrveli’s indeclinable verbal
noun form, the infinitive:

(4) Txsit croba šenrdzad Biaghe.

txas -it cro -ba šen- rdz -ad Bia -ghe
1.SG -DAT compose -INF NMLZ- send -ACC.INDEF Bia -BEN
“I have [to compose a letter] for Bia.”
Or: “To compose a letter for Bia is mine.”

With the implication that the action is the one’s own to do or to perform, like a task placed
in one’s hands.

The necessitative periphrasis being derived from a possessive construction also suggests
why it is necessarily periphrastic, in that it is necessarily communicated by multiple words.
Middle Mtsqrveli possesses an applicative voice marker da- which promotes an oblique
2
The underlying logic of this construction is made more clear with the addition of a copula, e.g. “to a certain
man were two sons”; however Old and Middle Mtsqrveli are null-copula. Old Mtsqrveli had a verb urt ‘to have’
which was highly irregular and rarely used and has fallen out of use entirely in Middle Mtsqrveli; Middle
Mtsqrveli retains the verb mplobsva ‘to possess’ but it is less used than the dative possessive construction (cf.
the relative frequencies of use of English “to have” vs. “to possess”).

Page 2
argument—typically an indirect object, marked dative—to the direct object of the verb,
whereby it may then be expressed by a direct object verbal affix rather than needing to be
explicitly stated. This typically has the effect of shortening the utterance somewhat when
the object is not salient, which is the principal use of the applicative voice:

(5) (Txas) mocroes kartit.

txas mo- cro -es kart -it
1.SG.NOM.INDEF 3.SG.DO- compose -1.SG.S 3.SG -DAT
“I write it to him.”
(6) (Txas) damocroes.
txas da- mo- cro -es
1.SG.NOM.INDEF APPL- 3.SG.DO- compose -1.SG.S
“I write [something] to him.”

However, although the subject takes the dative in the necessitative construction, no compa-
rable example of the dative argument being abstracted away by valency-changing operations
and person affixes is attested:

(7) Txsit mocroba kartxe.

txas -it mo- cro -ba kart -xe
1.SG -DAT 3.SG.DO- compose -INF 3.SG -BEN
“I must write to him.”
(8) *Dacrobam kartxe.
da- cro -ba -m kart -xe
APPL- compose -INF -1.SG.DO 3.SG -BEN
Intended: “I must write to him.”

The fact that the dative argument in the necessitative construction is not subject to this
otherwise productive valency-changing operation, which acts on the core arguments of tran-
sitive verbs, implies that the dative argument in the necessitative construction was not, in
fact, conceptualized as a core argument. That is, the diminishment of the agency of the sub-
ject, by demoting it from nominative to dative, is not intentional. Rather than originating
from an indirect object, the quirky subject originates from the possessive construction, and
therefore it cannot be removed by typical methods of removing indirect objects; therefore,
the quirky subject must be explicitly stated. This implies that the necessitative construction
must be split up among at least two words (the subject and the infinitive). That is what
makes the necessitative construction periphrastic.

Future and Conditional Constructions

Old Mtsqrveli had a morpheme dzi to indicate the future tense, which could either be
suffixed to the head of the verb phrase, or stand alone as a particle. Though rarely used,
there were a handful of infixes—remnants of the old PTZ aspectual system—that could be
applied to the particle form, but not the suffix, to produce a more specific future meaning, e.g.
dzeti for the remote future, dziga for the immediate future, and dziri for the habitual future.
However, -dzi was by far most often used as a suffix instead of a particle. The resemblance

Page 3
 Middle Mtsqrveli

of -dzi to the old necessitative-imperative -dze/-dzo has prompted some speculation that
they are ultimately doublets of the same ancestral PTZ or even Pre-PTZ form, but this has
never been demonstrated.

The use of dzi and its derivatives have become less common in Middle Mtsqrveli with the
development of a periphrastic future construction. It is notable for the resultant agent/patient
inversion, where 1) the subject takes the accusative case, 2) the direct object takes the nom-
inative case, 3) the subject is marked on the verb with direct object markers, and 4) the
direct object is marked on the verb with subject markers.

The auxiliary verb used to form the periphrastic future construction is qveba. This is a
form of the infinitive qveba that is derived from the verbalizer -eb plus the root *qve, back-
formed from the noun qvela ‘right; dues; that which is owed,’ by rebracketing from qvel-a
to qve-la (where -la is a productive nominalizing suffix). The resultant literal meaning of
qveba is taken to be something like ‘to behoove; to indebt; to oblige.’

Forming the Future and Conditional

For transitive verbs, the future construction is formed by placing qveba next to the lexical
verb, which is placed in the present tense; the lexical verb also must be prefixed by the
preverb a-, and the subject marked on it with the corresponding direct object marker, and
vice versa for the direct object (marked as a subject):

(9) mogherianebdam
mo- gherian -eb -da -m
TRZ- praise -VBZ -2.SG.S -1.SG.DO
“You praise me”

(10) qveba amogherianebades

qveb -a a- mo- gherian -eb -ad -es
FUT.AUX -3.SG.S PV- TRZ- praise -VBZ -2.SG.DO -1.SG.S
“You will praise me”
mogherianebades
mo- gherian -eb -ad -es
TRZ- praise -VBZ -2.SG.DO -1.SG.S
“I praise you”
qveba amogherianebdam
qveb -a a- mo- gherian -eb -da -m
FUT.AUX -3.SG.S PV- TRZ- praise -VBZ -2.SG.S -1.SG.DO
“I will praise you”

If there is no direct object, a 3rd person singular dummy object is obligatorily marked, if
the verb is normally transitive:

(11) *qveba ač’smem

qveb -a a- č’sme -m
FUT.AUX -3.SG.S PV- eat -1.SG.DO

Page 4
(12) qveba ač’smiam
qveb -a a- č’sme -a -m
FUT.AUX -3.SG.S PV- eat -3.SG.S -1.SG.DO
“I will eat [something]”

The periphrastic future is formed somewhat differently for intransitive verbs. It may be
formed the same as transitive verbs, but without the obligatory dummy subject:

(13) qveba atoxe

qveb -a a- tox -xe
FUT.AUX -3.SG.S PV- swim -3.PL.DO
“They will swim”

Alternatively, the periphrastic future may be formed for intransitive verbs by marking the
subject as the direct object of qveba and rendering the lexical verb as an infinitive, rather
than marking the subject as the direct object of the lexical verb. In such a case, the preverb
is not necessary:

(14) qvebxia toxva

qveb -xe -a tox -va
FUT.AUX -3.PL.DO -3.SG.S swim -INF
“They will swim”

The latter is considered more correct and a formalism; the former is attested in more
informal situations and is an extension of the transitive strategy, spread to intransitive verbs
by analogy.

Note, however, that if the subject is 1st person-singular and the latter strategy is used,
*qvebam is not the form of the auxiliary verb used, but rather a special form qvem that
results from nasal assimilation of the /b/ to the /m/ in *qvebam:

(15) *qvebam guliva

qvem guliva
qveb -a -m guli -va
FUT.AUX -3.SG.S -1.SG.DO perish -INF
“I will perish”

The conditional mood is created by placing the auxiliary verb in the aorist:

(16) qvebit ač’smiam

qveb -it a- č’sme -a -m
FUT.AUX -AOR PV- eat -3.SG.S -1.SG.DO
“I would eat [something]”

Page 5
 Middle Mtsqrveli

(17) qvebxit toxva

qveb -xe -it tox -va
FUT.AUX -3.PL.DO -AOR swim -INF
“They would swim”

(18) qvebtam guliva

qveb -t -a -m guli -va
FUT.AUX -AOR -3.SG.S -1.SG.DO perish -INF
“I would perish”

Evolution of the Future

Old Mtsqrveli did not, and indeed for the most part Middle Mtsqrveli does not, allow
multiple conjugated verbs within the same clause. It is therefore necessary to analyze the
construction, which contains multiple conjugated verbs, as a union of multiple separate
clauses when looking for how it originated.

As the aforewritten examples demonstrate, qveba is not being used in its infinitive form
“to behoove” in the future construction, but in a 3rd person present-tense form “it behooves”
which is phonetically identical; this is due to the two forms being merged by sound change
(namely, the simplification of the /b.ʋ/ cluster found in the infinitive *qvebva to /b/ by
labial assimilation).

In addition, Old and Middle Mtsqrveli do not require a conjunction like the English “that”
to subordinate non-relative clauses (although they may do so with nevt):

(19) Unda sania, gi dvia Jvari ošpas

unda sani -a gi dv -ia jvar -i ošp -as
NEG.ADV utter -3.SG.S if DEM -NOM.DEF lord -GEN.INDEF wrath -ACC.DEF
“It does not say whether this was the wrath of the Lord, ...” (ŠENQRDOLA)

(20) Ġamšia, txsi eniali bghia dzi enis mp’arveli...

ġa- mši -a txas -i ena -iali bghi -ia dzi ena
PSV- write -3.SG.S 1.SG -GEN.INDEF house -GEN.DEF name -NOM.DEF FUT house
-is mp’arevs -i
-ACC.DEF prayer -GEN.INDEF
“It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer, ...” (MATTHEW 21:13)

The likeliest explanation, considering the above, is that the periphrastic future construction
originated as qveba with a direct object subordinating an infinitive in an utterly typical
serial verb construction for intransitive verbs:

(21) qvebc’ia čemoba

qveb -c’e -a čem- o -va
FUT.AUX -1.PL.DO -3.SG.S IT- go -INF
*“It behooves us to go”
Or: “We will go”

Page 6
 But, for transitive verbs, subordinating another clause which has its own separate subject,
and has been rendered in the passive voice:

(22) qvem, ġamqda

qveb -a -m ġa- mq -da
FUT.AUX -3.SG.S -1.SG.DO PSV- kill -2.SG.S
*“It behooves me, [that] you are killed”
Or: “I will kill you”

As passivization of the lexical verb would be necessary to explain why, in the future pe-
riphrasis, the direct object is marked like a subject despite acting as the semantic patient -
and, in addition, erosion of the initial /ɢ/ from the passivizer ġa- would explain the appear-
ance of the preverb a- in the future periphrasis.

It seems then that the 3rd person dummy subject form qveba became so frequently used to
the exclusion of other forms, that it came to be interpreted as indeclinable (akin to English
modal auxiliaries) or even a particle to replace dzi. If so, then came to be assumed that
placing a direct object on qveba was ungrammatical, causing the direct object suffix to
migrate to the lexical verb:

(23) *qvebad, adac’ers

qveba -d a- da- c’er -s
FUT -2.SG.DO PV- APPL- say -1.SG.S
Intended: “It behooves you, [that] I be told”
(24) qveba adac’erdes
qveba a- da- c’er -d -es
FUT PV- APPL- say -2.SG.DO -1.SG.S
“You will tell me”

The end result being to invert subject and direct object on the lexical verb, similar to
inversion in certain screeves in Georgian. In fact, the comparison to Georgian is apt, because
like in Georgian, inversion in Mtsqrveli does not occur on intransitive verbs because there
is nothing to invert; inversion requires two arguments. Instead, intransitive verbs remain
rendered in the infinitive in a serial verb construction, as the complement to some form of
qveba.

Perfect and Pluperfect Constructions

Middle Mtsqrveli has evolved four distinct morphologized perfect verb tenses which in
previous stages of the language were not distinguished from the aorist or imperfect pasts
or the present tense. They consist of both an active and passive voice of the perfect and
pluperfect tenses.

Evolution of the Perfect

All such perfect forms were formed by the merger of an intermediate periphrastic con-
struction of the past participle of the lexical verb with one of two auxiliary verbs, iq’seba
‘to set; to render; to cause to be in a state or condition’ and iq’oba ‘to be set; to be rendered; to
be in a state or condition,’ e.g.:

Page 7
 Middle Mtsqrveli

(25) *laoni iq’sebades

la -oni iq’seb -ad -es
serve -PCP PERF.AUX -2.SG.DO -1.SG.S
“I render you served”

(26) laoniq’sebades
“I have served you” (LUKE 15:29)

The resemblance between these auxiliary verbs is not incidental; iq’oba, from Old Mt-
sqrveli iq’obva, is derived from the Proto-Tskhri-Zani root *jəkˤʼ- (of uncertain meaning,
but perhaps “as it is; natural; to occur” or something similar) from whence also Middle Mt-
sqrveli iq’uli ‘raw’ and iq’os ‘state; condition.’ iq’seba is not attested in Old Mtsqrveli and
appears to be derived from iq’os with the generic verbalizer -eb applied triggering syncope
of the medial unstressed /ɔ/ from the intermediate *iq’oseba.

Formation of the Perfect

The active perfect and pluperfect are derived from iq’seba while the passive perfect and
pluperfect are derived from iq’oba. The perfect is formed by placing the auxiliary verb in
the present:

(27) tark’uniq’sebs
tark’ -uni -iq’seb -s
select -PCP -PERF.AUX -1.SG.S
“I have selected”
lit. “I render [something] selected”

(28) tark’uniq’obs
tark’ -uni -iq’ob -s
select -PCP -PERF.AUX -1.SG.S
“I have been selected”
lit. “I am rendered selected”

The pluperfect is formed by placing the auxiliary verb in the aorist:

(29) tark’uniq’sebits
tark’ -uni iq’seb -it -s
select -PCP PERF.AUX -AOR -1.SG.S
“I had selected”
lit. “I rendered [something] selected”

(30) tark’uniq’obits
tark’ -uni iq’ob -it -s
select -PCP PERF.AUX -AOR -1.SG.S
“I had been selected”
lit. “I was rendered selected”

Page 8
 The lexical source of the auxiliary verbs suggests the answer to a peculiarity of their usage,
which is that forms derived from iq’oba, though ostensibly passive, are also observed for
semantically active intransitive verbs:

(31) *qarjevniq’sebs
qar -je -vni iq’seb -s
sin -VBZ -PCP PERF.AUX -1.SG.S

(32) qarjevniq’obs
qar -je -vni iq’ob -s
sin -VBZ -PCP PERF.AUX -1.SG.S
“I have sinned”

(33) *jarcvniq’seba
jarc -vni iq’seb -a
call.out -PCP PERF.AUX -3.SG.S

(34) jarcvniq’oba
jarc -vni iq’ob -a
call.out -PCP PERF.AUX -3.SG.S
“He has called out; he has hollered”

This is simply due to iq’seba being transitive and thus requiring a direct object, which
cannot be supplied by an intransitive verb. Instead, intransitive verbs simply use an intran-
sitive auxiliary iq’oba instead, which often fits anyway as proportionally more intransitive
than transitive verbs are semantically patientive.

There is one additional auxiliary verb used on occasion to form the perfect tenses limited
to a closed set of verbs. dgoba ‘to stand,’ being extended to a more general meaning of ‘to be
(locative),’ may used rather than iq’oba for some verbs of motion, though not to the exclusion
of iq’oba. The use of dgoba effects a change in connotation, implying that the movement
was telic and completed, that the speaker actually attained their destination. iq’oba does
not imply this; it topicalizes the action itself rather than the result or destination, and this
may be construed by some speakers as describing an atelic or incomplete action:

(35) Ghnonidgves ap erč’veradz dzoli.

ghno -oni -dgv -es ap ert= č’vera -dz dzol -i
run -PCP -PERF.AUX -1.SG.S up on= top -LAT mountain -GEN
“I have run up to the top of the mountain [, reached the peak, and stood atop it].”

(36) Ghnoniq’obs ap erč’veradz dzoli.

ghno -oni -iq’ob -s ap ert= č’vera -dz dzol -i
run -PCP -PERF.AUX -1.SG.S up on= top -LAT mountain -GEN
“I have run to the top of the mountain [, and I may or may not have actually reached
the top, but I did run].”

Page 9
 Asa Serial Verb Construc­
02 tion

by SufferingFromEntropy

Reject Morphemes, Embrace Syntax

Asa is an analytic language that is spoken on the Asa Islands. Asa descends from Old
Qrai, the ancestor of Modern Qrai. Although Old Qrai is a synthetic language, due to severe
sound changes, analogy, and morpheme leveling, Asa has become more analytic during its
development. In Old Qrai, there were many ways of forming a complex predicate using
multiple verbs, some of which still survives into Modern Qrai. Asa, however, reconstructs
these constructs into serial verb constructs, where any overt marking of dependency of a
component verb is removed. Along the way, Asa also developed some innovative uses of
serial verb constructs, making it distinctive from Old Qrai and Modern Qrai.

Background
A typical Asa sentence follows VSO order. Subjects or objects may be fronted when they
serve as the topic of an utterance. Some words such as personal pronouns are often fronted
due their salience. Some grammatical devices such as negation and interrogatives also front
their topic to the front of the main verb. (1) lays out a simple sentence in Asa using personal
pronouns sa /sa/ ‘I’ and ja /ʕa/ ‘he, she, it’ and a common verb is /is/ ‘to see’.

(1) Sa is ja.
sa is ja
1.SG see 3.SG
“I see him.”

Most words in Asa are monosyllabic. Verbs are conjugated for past tense and subjunctive
mood. Some verbs have distinct negated form. Table 1 briefly tabulates Asa verb conju-
gation. There is a subset of verbs that have different past form from others, where the
consonant /ts/ directly follows the glottalized nasals or lateral /l/.

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 Asa

IPA Meaning Past Subjunctive

dyan’ /dʲanʼ/ ‘to enter’ dyan’its /dʲanʼits/ dyany’ /dʲanʲʼ/
jants /ʕants/ ‘to replace’ jantsits /ʕantsits/ jantsy /ʕantsʲ/
tsin /tsin/ ‘to give’ tsil’its /tsilʼits/ tsily /tsilʲ/
’um /ʔum/ ‘to kneel’ ’um’ts /ʔumʼts/ ’umy /ʔumʲ/
jin /ʕin/ ‘to color’ jin’ts /ʕinʼts/ jiny /ʕinʲ/
ral /ral/ ‘to show’ ral’ts /ralʼts/ raly /ralʲ/
Table 1: Asa verb conjugation.

Serial Verb Construct

Serial verb construct (SVC for short) is a construct where multiple independent verbs are
put together, forming one single predicate, sharing arguments, and referring to an event
that is different from any of its components. SVC have different functions and syntactic
behaviors cross-lingually, and linguists have been putting effort into building a framework
that identifies and analyzes SVCs. The analysis and terminology used here will be based
on that of Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald. Linguists have proposed some criteria of a multi-verb
expression being an SVC, and they are listed below.

1. Main verbhood
2. Monoclausity
3. Prosodic property
4. Shared polarity value
5. Eventhood
6. Shared argument

There are also other Asa multi-verb constructs which seem identical to true SVCs to the
untrained eye. These proposed criteria are useful for excluding non-SVCs, but any single
one of them cannot determine if a construct is an SVC definitively. Below we will put these
criteria into use and exclude non-SVCs that fail to meet these criterion.

Main verbhood
Main verbhood refers to whether any component of an SVC can act as a main verb in a
mono-verb clause. More precisely, it mandates that the meaning and spelling of each of its
components must not stray away too far from their uses when used independently. This
criterion excludes constructs that match any of the following descriptions:

1. One of its components only occur in this particular situation.

2. One of its components only have such reading in this particular situation.
3. One of its components does not function as a verb in other context.
4. The construct only allows a particular set of combinations; that is, these combinations
are lexicalized and idiomatic.

Two examples in (2) are presented here for analysis and comparison. In both examples,
each predicate is composed of two words and the first component is marked with a suffix
-(’)its denoting past tense. The argument that comes before a predicate is the subject and
that which comes after is the object.

Page 12
(2) a. Sa gyil’its jin lij.
sa gyil -’its jin lij
1.SG axe -PST fall tree
“I felled a tree.”

b. Sa tsusits lus hunkun.

sa tsus -its lus hunkun
1.SG bear -PST be at PLACE
“I was born in Hong Kong.”

Given that each of the verbs, gyin1 , jin2 , tsus, and lus has an English translation that is a
verb, one would think that the phrases gyin jin and tsus lus are SVCs. In fact, (3) shows
that the first three words are indeed verbs.

(3) a. Sa gyil’its gaf.

sa gyil -’its gaf
1.SG axe -PST door
“I axed a door.”

b. Lij jil’its.
lij jil -’its
tree fall -PST
“The tree fell.”

c. Mas tsusits gi.

mas tsus -its gi
mother bear -PST baby
“The mother gave birth to a baby.”

(4a) shows that the word lus acts like a locative copula, linking the subject and the object,
suggesting that the subject is at the place denoted by the object. However, this copula is
not inflected for past tense as other verbs are. (4b) shows that the inflected form *lusits is
ungrammatical. The past tense of this copula is realized by the addition of the word ’uts,
which is essentially the past tense of the verb u /u/ ‘to be’. Therefore, the word lus is better
analyzed as a locative preposition, marked as LOC as in (4c), and we had better reconsider
(4a) with a zero-copula.

(4) a. Sa lus hunkun.

sa lus hunkun
1.SG be at PLACE
“I am in Hong Kong.”
1
Non-past form of gyilits.
2
When it refers to ‘to fall, collapse,’ its past tense is jil’its. When it refers to ‘to color, paint,’ its past tense
is jin’ts. They are two different lexical entries that follow different conjugation patterns but have the same
lexical form.

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 Asa

b. *Sa lusits hunkun.

sa lus -its hunkun
1.SG be at -PST PLACE
Intended: “I was in Hong Kong.”

c. Sa ’uts lus hunkun.

sa ’uts lus hunkun
1.SG be.PST LOC PLACE
“I was in Hong Kong.”

Therefore, it is established that constructs such as (2b) are not true SVCs. Words that may
appear to be copulas but are actually prepositions include lus /lus/ ‘(for an animate subject)
to be at’, jis /ʕis/ ‘(for an inanimate subject) to be at’, jimy /ʕimʲ/ ‘to use’, and tsin /tsin/ ‘to
serve’. These words do not pass the main verbhood criterion.

Monoclausity
Monoclausity refers to whether a sentence is composed of exactly one clause rather than
multiple coordinated clauses. The criterion of monoclausity mandates that a true SVC must
be monoclausal. As a result, explicit syntactic devices such as coordination and subordina-
tion entails that the construct is not an SVC3 . Any multi-verb predicate where the subjunctive
marker -y is present fails the criterion, since the marker signals subordination. (5a) shows
that the clause tuly...dali is subordinated to the verb jas /ʕas/ ‘to say, suppose’. (5b) shows
that the verb in subjunctive mood refers to the manner of the main verb.

(5) a. Jas tuly phyi dali.

jas tul -y phyi dali
say red -SBJV that flower
“I suppose that the flower is red.”

b. Sa fi bily phyi nats.

sa fi bil -y phyi nats
1.SG arrive run -SBJV that house
“I ran to that house.”

The subjunctive marker is also present in negation and interrogative, where verbs following
either sah /sah/ ‘to not have’ or ah /ah/ ‘is it, does it’ are marked as subjunctive. One may
argue that, in these cases, the subjunctive marker is solely a mood suffix, instead of a subor-
dinator, with these verbs either lacking a distinct subjunctive form or having a subjunctive
form identical to its lexical form. This is apparently not true, as is shown in (6), where
ah precedes sah and the latter is inflected for subjunctive. Therefore, both negation and
interrogative are not SVCs in Asa.
3
The condition that there is no explicit syntactic marker is, however, a necessary condition. It is not
sufficient since there are non-SVC constructs that show no explicit coordination or subordination markers. A
condition P is necessary for an event Q when failing to meet P means Q failing to occur. A condition P is
sufficient for an event Q when satisfying P also satisfies Q consequentially.

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(6) Da ah sahy isy pfya.
da ah sah -y is -y pfya
2.SG Q NEG -SBJV see -SBJV that
“Did not you saw that?”

Prosodic properties is a necessary4 condition for SVCs. That is, if the prosodics of a multi-
verb construct has an intonation or pause pattern that suggests multiple clauses, then the
multi-verb construct in question is not an SVC. This criterion excludes coordination with no
overt marker. In Asa, all clauses are separated by pauses, as are heads of different clauses
in coordination. The prosodic pause is indicated by the slash in (7), where a pause causes
different interpretation of seemingly identical sentences.

(7) a. Sa naj / luy ja.

sa naj / luy ja
1.SG beat COORD step 3.SG
“I am going to beat him and tread on him.”

b. Sa naj luy ja.

sa naj luy ja
1.SG beat step 3.SG
“I am going to devastate him.”

Single eventhood
Single eventhood refers to whether the SVC refers to a simple coherent event or a macro-
event composed of closely related sub-events, as opposed to a series of events, each indicated
by one verb of the multi-verb predicate. Two examples (8a) and (8b) are given, where the
former refers to two separate events and the latter refers to a single event. Note that, in this
fashion, SVCs usually translate into a mono-verb predicate in languages without SVCs.

(8) a. Ja dil’its ’ij’its.

ja dil -’its ’ij -’its
3.SG faint -PST die -PST
“He fainted and passed away.”

b. Sa naj’its ’ij ja.

sa naj -’its ’ij ja
1.SG fist -PST die 3.SG
“I beat him to death.”

The criterion of single eventhood depends on our interpretation of words rather than per-
ceivable surface form. As a result, the notion of eventhood depends on our cognition, and
SVCs serve as cultural constructs encoding macro-events that are salient in a given culture.
For example, in Hmong language, dancing while playing bamboo pipes is a conceptualized
4
It is, again, necessary but not sufficient. In other words, there are cases where a non-SVC construct
exhibiting the same prosodic properties as a genuine SVC.

Page 15
 Asa

activity that is encoded with an SVC, but dancing while singing a song can only be consid-
ered simultaneous activities. In Asa, there is also a phrase pfas fum /pfas fum/ ‘to rage and
cry’ that refers to crying while getting mad, an idea that is well conceptualized in Asa but
can hardly be expressed with a mono-verb predicate in English5 .

(9) Ja pfas fum.

ja pfas fum
3.SG rage cry
“He is so mad that he cries.”

We can never determine if a construct is truly SVC if we have no full knowledge of the
culture, but perhaps we can look for semantic clues that determine if a construct refers
to a coherent set of events. As such, Bohnemeyer et al. proposed macro-event property
(MEP) as a semantic property of those constructs that we intuitively think are referring to
a (macro-)event. A construct is said to possess MEP if grammatical devices such as tense,
aspect, modality, and polarity have their scope over all of its sub-events. If one sub-events
is located differently in time from others, or one is negative while others are affirmative,
then the construct is not qualified as a true SVC. Examples in (10) show that the past tense
marker -(’)its, the progressive aspect marker u lus (past tense ’uts lus), and the negating
verb sah all have scope over all the following verbs.

(10) a. Ja dahits ’um m’i.

ja dah -its ’um m’i
3.SG climb -PST kneel ground
“He crept on the ground.”
Not: “He climbed and now he kneels on the ground.”

b. Ja ’uts lus dan fuh palti.

ja ’uts lus dan fuh palti
3.SG be LOC eat drink party
“He was enjoying a party.”
Not: “He was eating and now he drinks a party.”

c. Sa sah dany ’un bi ih.

sa sah dan -y ’un bi ih
1.SG NEG eat -SBJV end this meal
“I am not done eating the meal.”
Not: “I do not eat and the meal is done.”

Note that a device having a scope over all sub-events is not identical with all components of
a construct receiving the same grammatical marking6 . If anything, one should raise concern
5
I am in no way an expert in English, but after a quick Google search I found the phrase “angry tears”.
Maybe “shedding angry tears” can be a good mono-verb translation.
6
Although it is stated above that the presence of a subordination or coordination marker disqualify the
construct being an SVC, not all overt markers disqualifies the construct, and the different in markers present
on each of the components does not always signal such disqualification. Japanese and Bali-Vitu have SVCs
with their components marked differently.

Page 16
when such double-marking is present, because this signals that these events are separated
and encoded by two clauses. (11) demonstrates that how an additional past tense marker
on the second verb changes the interpretation. Here an adverb pfuh /pfuh/ ‘after that, and
then’ is added to the end of each sentence.

(11) a. Ja dahits ’um m’i pfuh.

ja dah -its ’um m’i pfuh
3.SG climb -PST kneel ground and then
“After that, he crept on the ground.”

b. Ja dahits ’um’its m’i pfuh.

ja dah -its ’um -’its m’i pfuh
3.SG climb -PST kneel -PST ground and then
“He climbed up (the ground), and then he kneeled on the ground.”

Semantics
SVC is a grammatical device that cover a wide range of functions cross-lingually. Even
within a particular language, SVC may serve multiple purposes, as is the case of Asa. Asa
SVCs, according to the relationship between the interpretation of the whole SVC and each
meaning of their constituents, can be categorized into four groups: contemporaneous, cause-
effect, causative, and event-argument SVCs. Table 2 gives these four types of SVCs and their
parameters of variation.

Symmetry Argument sharing

Contemporaneous symmetrical S(V1 ) = S(V2 )
Cause-effect symmetrical O(V1 ) = S(V2 )
Causative asymmetrical O(V1 ) = S(V2 )
Event-argument asymmetrical V1 = S(V2 )
Table 2: Three main types of Asa SVCs.

Contemporaneous SVCs Contemporaneous SVCs are those whose constituent verbs de-
note events or actions that occur at the same time, in the same period of time, or in an
iconic sequence. In addition to that, the subjects and objects of these actions are identical.
Examples include pfas fum /pfas fum/ ‘to shed angry tears’, dah ’um /dah ʔum/ ‘to creep,
crawl’, and tsin tsaf /tsin tsaf/ ‘to exchange, trade’.

(12) Sa tsin tsaf lus hunkun.

sa tsin tsaf lus hunkun
1.SG give get LOC PLACE
“I do business in Hong Kong.”

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 Asa

Cause-effect SVCs Cause-effect SVCs are those whose V1 denotes the cause of the action
or the state of V2 . Different from contemporaneous SVCs, the subject of V1 is different from
that of V2 . It is the subject of V2 who experiences the state or performs the action stated by
V2 , despite it appearing as the object of the whole predicate. Examples include juh an /ʕuh
an/ ‘to scare away’, jin tul /ʕin tul/ ‘to paint red’, and gyin jin /gʲin ʕin/ ‘to fell, cut down’.

(13) Da juhits an ji.

da juh -its an ji
2.SG scare -PST leave 3.PL
“You scared them away.”

Causative SVCs Causative SVCs are those whose V1 carries a function of causation, denot-
ing that the subject is the cause of the action of V2 . V2 of such SVCs is always intransitive.
Some transitive verbs may occur as V2 , but their objects are never explicitly stated. V1 of
such SVCs are restricted to the following verbs: tsin /tsin/ ‘to give’, tsutsun /tsutsun/ ‘order,
command’, t’un /tʼun/ ‘to permit’, tsam’ /tsamʼ/ ‘to force’, and litsim /litsim/ ‘to drive’.

(14) Pfyi gibin tsam’ t’un sa.

pfyi gibin tsam’ t’un sa
that law force yield 1.SG
“The law forces me to yield.”

Event-argument SVCs Event-argument SVCs are SVCs where V1 and V2 share no argu-
ments but the event of V1 as a whole is the subject of V2 . The state, manner, or attribute
denoted by V2 describes the event or its outcome denoted by V1 . In this regard, V2 can only
be stative verbs, and they usually come from a rather small set of verbs. Examples include
dyum’ j’um /dʲumʼ ʕʼum/ ‘to emend, correct’ and ’ilf bal /ʔilf bal/ ‘to misconstrue’.

(15) Da sutsits j’um ba.

da suts -its j’um ba
2.SG say -PST right this
“You were right about this.”

Symmetry
The term symmetry refers to how restricted the composition of SVCs are. If there are no
or few restrictions on which verb is eligible for both slots V1 and V2 , then the SVC is called
symmetrical. On the other hand, if one of the constituents of an SVC is restricted to a rather
smaller set of verbs, such an SVC is said to be asymmetrical. Symmetry of an SVC can be
used to categorize an SVC and predict its development. Symmetrical SVCs are prone to
lexicalization while asymmetrical SVCs are prone to grammaticalization.

Although it is said that the constituents of a symmetrical SVC are unrestricted, it does not
necessarily mean that symmetrical SVCs allow all possible combinations of verbs to occur.

Page 18
In other words, symmetrical SVCs apply restrictions on the combination of its constituents,
and their order is often iconic—their syntactic order reflects their chronological order, and
reversing such order is usually ungrammatical, as demonstrated by (16).

(16) a. Ja tsafits fuh pfya.

ja tsaf -its fuh pfya
3.SG take -PST drink that
“He took it and drank it.”

b. *Ja fuhits tsaf pfya.

ja fuh -its tsaf pfya
3.SG drink -PST take that
Intended: “He took it and drank it.”

Symmetrical SVCs also often suffer semantic shift to different extents. In some extreme cases,
the combination becomes so idiosyncratic that its interpretation seems to be unrelated to its
constituents – it is just an idiom. Asa contemporaneous SVCs are prone to such lexicalization,
as seen in phrases tsin tsaf /tsin tsaf/ ‘to trade’ and dan fuh /dan fuh/ ‘to enjoy’.

The constituent that is restricted in an asymmetrical SVC is called minor verb, and the other
major verb. Table 3 lists all minor verbs that occur in asymmetrical SVCs. Minor verbs could
occur at either V1 or V2 . They are V1 of causative SVCs and V2 of event-argument SVCs.

Minor verb candidates

Causative tsin /tsin/ ‘to give’
tsutsun /tsutsun/ ‘order, command’
t’un /tʼun/ ‘to permit’
tsam’ /tsamʼ/ ‘to force’
litsim /litsim/ ‘to drive’
Event-argument j’um /ʕʼum/ ‘correct’
bal /bal/ ‘wrong’
lan /lan/ ‘felicitous, appropriate’
suy /suj/ ‘infelicitous, messed up’
’un /ʔun/ ‘over, finished’
busy /busʲ/ ‘feasible’
nyih /nʲih/ ‘required, obligatory’
Table 3: Minor verbs of Asa asymmetrical SVCs.

Valency
Asa transitive SVCs are composed of at least one transitive verb. If all constituents of an
SVC are intransitive, the resulting SVC is also intransitive. When transitive verbs coalesce
into an SVC while retaining their transitivity, they also introduce their arguments into the
matrix. The valency of the resulting SVC decreases when there is argument sharing, which
decreases the number of obligatory arguments to be filled out. In some languages, two
transitive verbs that share the same subject form a ditransitive SVC7 . Asa SVCs, however,
7
For example, Mandarin wǒ ná dao sha yú ‘I kill fish with knife.’ features two transitive verbs ná ‘to take’
and sha ‘to kill’ and three arguments wǒ ‘I’, dao ‘knife’, and yú ‘fish’. The valency of the resulting SVC (3) is
less than the sum of valencies of its constituents (2+2=4) by one.

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 Asa

further require their transitive constituents to share objects as well, resulting in monotran-
sitive SVCs. It is the prepositions that impart an instrumental or commitive argument. (17)
tries to express two events with different objects in one sentence but fails to be grammati-
cal, since these two events are not associated closely enough to be considered constituting
a macro-event.

(17) *Sa tsafits ba fuh pfya.

sa tsaf -its ba fuh pfya
1.SG take -PST this drink that
Intended: “I took this and drank that.”

Two transitive verbs or two intransitives can only make a contemporaneous SVC. Rarely
is a contemporaneous SVC composed of one transitive and one intransitive. Other types of
SVC can only be composed of exactly one transitive and one intransitive. Further more, V2
of cause-effect, causative, and event-argument SVCs are all intransitive. Still, when one of
the constituents is transitive, the resulting SVC is transitive as well.

In a few cases, an intransitive SVC results from combining transitive verbs. These SVCs
are results of lexicalization that developed its own argument structure from that provided
by its constituents. For example, the SVC tsin tsaf /tsin tsaf/ ‘to do business’ comprises of
two transitive verbs: tsin /tsin/ ‘to give’ and tsaf /tsaf/ ‘to take’. The SVC does not mean
that one gives and then takes back what is given out; rather, this pair of actions is treated
as typical actions of a transaction.

Conclusion
This article aims to provide an analysis on one particular construct of complex predicate:
the serial verb construct. First, the defining criteria of SVCs are discussed and used to
exclude non-SVCs that bear strong resemblance to true SVCs. After that, the Asa SVCs are
categorized into four types depending on their function, and the semantic and syntactic
properties are examined.

When I was working on complex predicates in Qrai, I thought adding SVCs to it would be
a good idea. Turns out that Qrai morphosyntax makes SVCs impractical. There are just too
many case and syntactic markers in Qrai (due to my desperate need of explicit indicator of
syntactic function). Then I turn to Asa, a sister language of Qrai that heavily reduces sounds
and syntactic markers. It is not to say that SVC cannot work in a language that marks
dative and accusative; rather, the obsession with overt indicators of syntactic function has
impaled my creativity in constructing predicates without overt dependency and clear pattern
of composition, I think.

Since SVCs are not a part of ‘average European language’, the idea appeared at first ob-
scure and unfathomable to me, despite the very fact that Mandarin, a language that heavily
incorporates SVC, is my mother tongue. Therefore, by writing this article and reading rel-
evant publications, I hope I can gain more knowledge in this topic and elaborate on the
morphosyntax of Asa (and perhaps gain more insight in developing Qrai grammar.)

References
Aikhenvald, Alexandra Y. ”Serial verb constructions in typological perspective.” Serial verb
constructions: A cross-linguistic typology 1 (2006): 68.

Page 20
Cleary-Kemp, Jessica. ”Serial verb constructions revisited: A case study from Koro. Berke-
ley.” CA: University of California at Berkeley PhD dissertation (2015).

Bohnemeyer, Jürgen, et al. ”Principles of event segmentation in language: The case of

motion events.” Language (2007): 495-532.

Page 21
 03 The Amniosian Language

by Shubh Gupta (TheO)

Verbal Constructions

Amniosian is the national language of Amniosa, a continent island. It is a synthetic lan-

guage but is quite analytical compared to its parent language which was even more synthetic.
Sometime around the middle ages, people from other parts of the world discovered Amniosa
and started trading. Amniosians treat their guests with a lot of kindness and this is embed-
ded in their culture. They have a welcoming nature. As a result, many immigrants started
settling in the country. This is when the proto-language began evolving into the modern
language. The languages of the traders and the immigrants influenced Amniosian a lot and
played a major role in the development of the language.

This is what you will hear from an Amniosian linguist. In reality, Amniosian was a lan-
guage that I started working on in October 2020. One month later, I scrapped the project
because I felt like the grammar was too bizarre. It was so quirky that even I started getting
confused.

After taking some time off, I reevaluated the project and took a step back. Finally, I started
redeveloping the language. So, I guess you can call this The Amniosian Language 2. It still
has the same “basic idea” of Amniosian 1 but with far less confusion. Still, I too get confused
from time to time!

Amniosian has two registers: formal and informal. The formal register is closer to the
mother language whereas the informal register is more analytical. The formal register has a
lot of inflections. Verbs are inflected for only tense, aspect, and mood. Verbs of the informal
register only inflect for aspect and mood. Tenses are marked with the help of auxiliary verbs.

Tense
Amniosian has five tenses: distant past, near past, present, near future, distant future.
There is no time limit of when “near tenses” end and when “distant tenses” begin. It purely
depends on the context. For example, the “distant tense” could refer to the latter part of the

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 Amniosian

day and the “near tense” could refer to lunch time. It may also be possible that the “distant
tense” refers to seven years from today and the “near tense” refers to a month from today

(1) lene goo leshimp Formal

len -e go -o lesh -imp
the.M -ERG 1.SG -ERG eat -PRS.SIM.IND
“I eat.”
(2) lene go leshimp Informal
len -e go lesh -imp
the.M -ERG 1.SG eat -PRS.SIM.IND
“I eat.”
(3) lene goo leshicti Formal
len -e go -o lesh-ic<t>i
the.M -ERG 1.SG -ERG eat -SIM.IND:DIS.FUT
“I will eat.”
(4) lene go stun leshimp Informal
len -e go stun lesh -imp
the.M -ERG 1.SG go.AUX eat -PRS.SIM.IND
“I will eat.”

Aspect
There are two grammatical aspects in Amniosian: simple and progressive. The simple
aspect is used for general facts. It does not tell us if the action is finished or is continuing.
The progressive or the continuous aspect tells us that the action is continuing.

(5) lina lia leshke Formal

lin -a li -a lesh -ke
the.F -ERG she -ERG eat -PRS.SIM.IND
“She eats.”
(6) lina li leshke Informal
lin -a li lesh -ke
the.F -ERG she eat -PRS.SIM.IND
“She eats.”
(7) lina lia leshge Formal
lin -a li -a lesh -ge
the.F -ERG she -ERG eat -PRS.PROG.IND
“She is eating.”
(8) lina li leshge Informal
lin -a li lesh -ge
the.F -ERG she eat -PRS.PROG.IND
“She is eating.”

Page 24
 The present perfective aspect may be conveyed by using the near past tense with the simple
aspect. The future perfective, by using the near future tense with the simple aspect. And
the past perfective, by using distant past tense.

(9) lene tsono leshasa Formal

len -e tson -o lesh -asa
the.M -ERG you.FOR -ERG eat -PST.SIM.IND
“You just now ate / you have eaten.”

(10) lene tse kenunla leshast Informal

len -e tse kenun -la lesh -ast
the.M -ERG you come.AUX -REC.PST eat -PRS.SIM.IND
“You just now ate / you have eaten.”

The simple aspect has unvoiced consonants in its suffix whereas the progressive aspect has
the voiced equivalents in its suffix.

(11) leshke
lesh -ke
eat -PRS.SIM.IND

(12) leshge
lesh -ge
eat -PRS.PROG.IND

Mood
Amniosian has four distinct moods: indicative, subjunctive, interrogative and imperative.
The affixes will have two forms depending upon the vowel. This is in accordance with vowel
harmony.

Vowel harmony
This language has rounded – unrounded vowel harmony, that is why there are two forms
of inflections. If the final vowel of the root verb is rounded, then the vowel of the inflection
is also rounded. Otherwise, the vowel in the infection is unrounded.

(13) lesh-va Ñ lesh-ke

lesh -va lesh -ke
eat -INF eat -PRS.SIM.IND

(14) sok-va Ñ sok-ko

sok -va sok -ko
like -INF like -PRS.SIM.IND

Page 25
 Amniosian

Indicative mood
The indicative mood is used to express facts or universal truths.

Near Future Tense Distant Future Tense

Future Tenses
Simple Progressive Simple Progressive
1st person ici/ucu igi/ugu icti/uctu igdi/ugdu
2nd person aha/ähä aja/äjä ahta/ähtä ajda/äjdä
3rd person ceh/coh gej/goj ceht/coht gejd/gojd

Near Past Tense Distant Past Tense

Past Tenses
Simple Progressive Simple Progressive
1st person iti/utu idi/udu itki/utku idgi/udgu
2nd person asa/äsä aza/äzä aska/äskä azga/äzgä
3rd person tes/tos dez/doz tesk/tosk dezg/dozg

Subjunctive mood
The subjunctive mood is used for commands, wishes and conditional statements.

Near Future Tense Distant Future Tense

Future Tenses
Simple Progressive Simple Progressive
1st person sci/scu zgi/zgu scit/scut zgid/zgud
2nd person fha/fhä vja/vjä fhat/fhät vjad/vjäd
3rd person shce/shco shge/shgo shcet/shcot shged/shgod

Near Past Tense Distant Past Tense

Past Tenses
Simple Progressive Simple Progressive
1st person sti/stu zdi/zdu stik/stuk zdig/zdug
2nd person fsa/fsä vza/vzä fsak/fsäk vzag/vzäg
3rd person shte/shto shde/shdo shtek/shtok shdeg/shdog

Conditional mood
Generally, conditional statements express a condition and then its outcome(s). In Am-
niosian, the condition is expressed first, then the outcome. The particle lar is suffixed to the
verb of the conditional clause and the particle var is suffixed to the verb of the clause indicat-
ing the outcome. All the verbs of conditional sentences will be inflected for the subjunctive
mood.

(15) lenne lene kenunoktlar, linna lina stunoktvar Formal

len - ne le - ne kenun - okt - lar lin - na li - na stun
the.M - NTR he - NTR go - PRS.SIM.S - COND the.F - NTR she - NTR come
-okt -var
-PRS.SIM.S -RES
“If he comes, then you can go.”
(16) lenne le kenunoktlar, linna li stunoktvar Informal
len -ne le kenun -okt -lar lin -na li stun -ok -tvar
the.M -NTR he go -PRS.SIM.S -COND the.F -NTR she come -PRS.SIM.S -RES
“If he comes, then you can go.”

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 Imperative mood
This mood is used in the informal register for expressing commands. To express commands
in the formal register, the subjunctive mood is used. The particle ra is added after the verb.
It is not suffixed.

(17) lene tsono leshaft Formal

len -e tson -o lesh -aft
the.M -ERG you.FOR -ERG eat -PRS.SIM.S
“I wish you eat/you please eat.”

(18) lene tse leshaft ra Informal

len -e tse lesh -aft ra
the.M -ERG you eat -PRS.SIM.S IMP
“You eat!”

Interrogative mood
The interrogative mood is used in questions. In questions, the word order changes from
subject-verb-object to verb-subject-object.

The verb will be conjugated for the indicative mood and the suffix -sham will be added
after the inflection.

(19) leshazdsham lene tsone Formal

lesh -azd -sham len -e tson -e
eat -PRS.PROG -Q the.M -ERG you.FOR -ERG
“Are you eating?”

(20) leshazdsham lene tse Informal

lesh -azd -sham le -ne tse
eat -PRS.PROG -Q the.M -ERG you
“Are you eating?”

Present Tense
Indicative Subjunctive
Present Tense
Simple Progressive Simple Progressive
1st person imp/ump imb/umb isht/usht ishd/ushd
2nd person ast/äst azd/äzd aft/äft avd/ävd
3rd person ke/ko ge/go ekt/okt egd/ogd

Morphosyntactic alignment
Amniosian follows the tripartite alignment. The subject of the transitive is placed under
the ergative case. The object of the (transitive) verb is placed under accusative and the
subject of the intransitive verb is placed under intransitive case. It is important to note that
all three cases have their own inflections.

Page 27
 Amniosian

(21) lene lee - transitive subject (he) (24) das da eu - transitive subject (it)
(22) lenaf leaf - transitive object (him) (25) das da auf - transitive object (it)
(23) lenne lene - intransitive subject (he)
(26) das da ni - intransitive subject (it)
(it inanimate)

Auxiliary verbs
Tenses in the informal register shall be expressed using auxiliary verbs. The verb ‘to go,’
when placed after the main verb, marks the future tense, and the verb ‘to come,’ when placed
after the main verb, marks the past tense. When the particle la is added after the auxiliary
verb, it conjugates the tense for the near future or near past tense.

(27) lenne lene stunshgod Formal

len -ne le -ne stun -shgod
the.M -NTR he -NTR go -FUT.PROG.IND
“He will be going.”

(28) lenne le stun stungo Informal

len -ne le stun stun-go
the.M -NTR he go.AUX go-SIM.PROG.IND
“He will be going.”

Gerunds
Gerunds are verbs that behave like nouns in a sentence. They have the ‘ing’ form as the
word ‘swimming’ in the sentence ‘Swimming is exhausting.’ Gerunds in Amniosian are formed
by inflecting the verb root like nouns and adding in an article before the verb.

Most of the Gerunds are Inanimate (neutral) nouns, so they will follow the grammar of the
inanimate nouns.

(29) lene lee sokko nasaf lesh auf Formal

len -e le -e sok -ko nasaf lesh auf
the.M -ERG he -ERG like -PRS.SIM.IND eat.GER
“He likes to eat.”

(30) lene le sokko nasaf lesh Informal

len -e le sok -ko nasaf lesh
the.M -ERG he like -PRS.SIM.IND eat.GER
“He likes to eat.”

Page 28
 Root form of the verb
All verbs end with va. To create the root form of the verb, the particle va is removed.
Suffixes are added to the root form of the verb.

Verb: stunva ‘go’

Root verb: stun

Conclusion
As you can see, Amniosian is an inflected language but the amount of inflection can vary
depending upon the register. Amniosian has five tenses—near past, distant past, present,
near future and future. It has two main aspects—simple and progressive. Tenses can be used
to convey the perfective aspect. Amniosian has three moods—indicative, subjunctive, inter-
rogative. The subjunctive is used to convey commands or requests, wishes and conditionals.
Auxiliary verbs exclusively belong to the informal register. Thus, only the present tense is
present in the informal register whereas the formal register has other tenses. The gerund is
made by treating the verb as an inanimate neutral noun. Amniosian is not completed yet!
This was just a gist of the verbal system of Amnosian. I still have a lot to work on and I shall
try to get them published in Segments. Thanks for reading!

Dictionary
Nouns/pronouns

• ga ‘I’
• tson ‘you FOR’
• tse ‘you NFOR’
• le ‘he’
• li ‘she’
• na ‘it AN’
• da ‘it INAN’

Verbs

• stunva ‘go’
• kenunva ‘come’
• leshva ‘eat’
• sokva ‘like’

Page 29
 Multiverb Constructions in
04 Hapi

by tryddle

"We can't say it with one word."

(1) póxihoo sóóhai sóíhi íkaíhaotóhikóa

“Haven’t you ever dreamt like this?”

Hello all, my name is tryddle and in this article I will talk about multiverb constructions
in my conlang Hapi. Some information about myself and Hapi: I’ve been conlanging for
almost 4½ years (as of May 2021), and it was at that time that I joined several conlanging
communities on reddit as well as on Discord. I’ve been active ever since and have made
many good friends on the way. Hapi is my fifth conlang, and probably also the most fleshed
out of these. Other conlangs of mine include Old Ataman, Nǃhṹnũ̂ɮ, Ɔwíʔʸixa and Bhang
Tac Wok, but I won’t talk about those in this article.

Hapi features a minimal phonemic inventory similar to Pirahã, and is characterized by

heavy verbal and nominal agglutination, with some fusional elements. Categories marked
directly on the verb are person, tense, mode, some aspects, and switch-reference, as well as
valency-modifying operations such as (anti-)passives and causatives. Other verbal categories
include frustration, mirativity, egophoricity and modality.

Hapi’s morphosyntactic alignment is split-ergative, with nouns exhibiting ergative-ab-

solutive alignment, while verbs agree with the S of intransitives and the A of transitives
(making verbal alignment nominative-accusative). Hapi also features heavy employment
of so-called ‘multiverb constructions’: serial verb constructions (SVCs), auxiliary verb con-
structions (AVCs) and syndetic verb constructions (SynVCs), which I will discuss in this
article.

This article is a continuation of a reddit post of mine, which was about SVCs. You might
notice some similarities between that post and the first part of this article; this is because I
re-used the reddit post so that I don’t have to re-write everything again.

Page 31
 Hapi

Brief Phonological Sketch

Before we dive into this article’s main topic, let’s take a look at Hapi’s phonology so that
you know how these example sentences are pronounced. Table 1 gives an overview of the
language’s phonemes.

Peripheral Alveolar Non-Alveolar Front Back

Stop p~b ⟨p⟩ t~r ⟨t⟩ k~g ⟨k⟩ High i
o
Fricative h ⟨h⟩ s~ts ⟨s⟩ ʃ~ʂ~χ ⟨x⟩ Low a
Table 1: Phonemic inventory

As you can see in the table, most of these phonemes are in free variation. I won’t spend
much time on the details of this; these phonemes have different values depending on the
speaker’s age, gender or social status. Hapi’s phonemic inventory is very small, therefore
this variation evolved due to the need for acoustic distinctiveness. The consonant phonemes
also possess different allophones depending on the phonological context, but I won’t consider
those here.

Hapi’s phonotactics are a straight-forward (C)V(V)(h). Each vowel may also take one of
three tones (high, low and mid), which are marked by diacritics: high ⟨á⟩, low ⟨à⟩ and
unmarked mid ⟨a⟩.

Now, before moving onto the actual topic of this article, I’ll have to discuss a specific
terminology, viz. regarding the term ‘syndetic’.

On the Term 'syndetic'

To understand what ‘syndetic’ verb construction is or what ‘syndetic’ actually means, we
must take a look at the typology of coordination. Haspelmath, 2004 states the following
about coordination: “A construction [A B] is considered coordinate if the two parts A and
B have the same status (in some sense that needs to be specified further), whereas it is not
coordinate if it is asymmetrical and one of the parts is clearly more salient or important,
while the other part is in some sense subordinate.” This is a preliminary definition that
is revised later in that paper, but for our purposes it shall suffice. A basic coordinating
constructions in English would be ‘John and Mary’ or ‘I ate and slept’. There are several types
of coordination cross-linguistically depending on the nature of the connecting particle.

Asyndetic coordination is characterized by simple juxtaposition of the coordinands, as

exemplified in (2).

(2) nga- bakala nga- uia tula [Lavukaleve]

1SG.POSS- paddle(M) 1SG.POSS- knife(F) small.SG.F
“my paddle and my small knife” (Haspelmath, 2004, p431)

As can be inferred from their names, monosyndetic coordination features a single coordina-
tor, while bisyndetic coordination involves two coordinators.1 Examples for monosyndetic
and bisyndetic coordination are given in (3) and (4).
1
The alert reader might have noticed that I called this third type of MVC ‘syndetic’, instead of mono- or
bisyndetic. This is because such a construction can involve either one or multiple coordinators; I have decided
that ‘syndetic’ would be the most fitting term in this context.

Page 32
(3) kwaangw nee duʼuma [Iraqw]
hare and leopard
“the hare and the leopard” (Haspelmath, 2004, p4)

(4) dineje ʔił midzish ʔił [Upper Kuskokwim Athabaskan]

moose with caribou with
“moose and caribou” (Haspelmath, 2004, p539)

Note that these are the basics of coordination in a typological aspect. There’s a lot more
to it than what I just sketched out, and if you want to learn more about it I suggest checking
out Haspelmath 2004. Now that I’ve clarified that, I will begin talking about the actual topic
of this article: multiverb constructions.

Multiverb Constructions
When you saw the title of this article, you might’ve asked yourself: “But what are those
multiverb constructions?”. In this section I will answer this question.

Multiverb constructions (hereafter MVCs) aren’t always the same cross-linguistically; in

Hapi, they are characterized by consisting of multiple verbs that form a single prosodic
unit.2 Other than that, these types of constructions don’t have much in common, as they
are all quite restrictive in their nature. I will now consider the structure and behaviour of
serial verb constructions in Hapi.

Serial Verb Constructions3

Properties of Serial Verb Constructions

While serial verb constructions (hereafter SVCs) come in every kind of shape cross-linguistically,
in Hapi there are constraints on how they may be formed. In the Hapi language:

• SVCs constitute several grammatical and phonological words,

• SVCs may be either contiguous or discontiguous,
• SVCs are always symmetrical,
• SVCs exhibit same-subject concordant marking and mixed marking of other grammat-
ical categories,
• SVCs’ components must share at least one argument,
• SVCs’ components are not connected by a linking morpheme;

Now let’s go through this list one by one: the first entry of the list is quite self-explanatory,
however I will still give examples of this. One-word SVCs can be observed e.g. in Mamaindê,
a Nambiquara language of Amazonia, as can be seen in example (5); in contrast, example
(6) from Hapi shows the same meaning, but with multiple grammatical and phonological
words.

(5) tu -ʔnĩu -ten -latʰa -∅ -wa [Mamaindê]

get -return -DESID -3SG -PRS -DECL
“He will bring it” (Eberhard, 2009, pp385-8, in Aikhenvald 2012)
2
More research has to be conducted on the characteristics of prosodic units in Hapi.
3
As I mentioned above, this section is heavily inspired by the aforementioned reddit post.

Page 33
 Hapi

(6) kó hóhi -a -o póói -a -o =kóa [Hapi]

3M.SG.S take -2/3 -FUT come -2/3 -FUT =DECL
“He will bring (it)4 ”

Next up, I will discuss the contiguity of SVCs. An example for non-contiguous SVCs both
in the natural language Akan and in Hapi can be seen in (7a) and (7b). (8) exemplifies
contiguous SVCs in Hapi. As can be seen in these examples, in a contiguous SVC, the verbs
are right next to each other, with no lexical material in between, but in a discontiguous one,
other words can come between them, e.g. verb objects, as in (7a) and (7b).

(7) a. mede aburow migu msum [Akan]

1SG.take corn 1SG.flow water.in
“I pour corn into water (lit. [I pour (corn)]-[I flow (in water)])”
(Schachter, 1974, p258, in Aikhenvald & Dixon 2006)
b. tà hóhi -h xoh potohí -h =kóa pàah -hóo [Hapi]
1SG.A take -1 corn.ABS pour -1 =DECL water -LOC
“I pour corn into water (lit. [I take corn]-[I pour into water])”

(8) tàhopí xíxí -h h- ákiih -h =kóa [Hapi]

1.INCL.S go.away -1 ANTIP- see -1 =DECL
“We will go away and see”

Now, you may ask, what do you mean by symmetrical SVCs? Well, to put it simply, sym-
metrical SVCs are constructions in which all verbal parts come from a relatively open, unre-
stricted class, while asymmetrical SVCs may have one ‘major’ (coming from an open class)
and one or several ‘minor’ (coming from a closed class) verbs. An example for asymmetrical
SVCs with a modal meaning comes from Warekena, as shown in (9):

(9) ya =mia wa- be -pia wa- wenita [Warekena]

NEG =PERF 1PL- can -NEG 1PL- buy
“We cannot buy anything any more” (Aikhenvald, 2012, p306)

In this example, the major verb wenita is preceded by the minor verb be. Since wenita
is from an open class (namely, a large set of lexical verbs), and be is a closed class verb
(namely, one from a small set of modal verbs), the SVC may be classified as asymmetrical.
In Hapi, there are no asymmetrical SVCs, so every single one of them contains at least two
verbs from a relatively open5 , unrestricted class. Nevertheless, auxiliary verb constructions
are very similar to asymmetrical SVCs: they are composed of a lexical verb which comes
from a relatively open class, and a closed class auxiliary verb which encodes grammatical
categories such as negation or aspect.
4
Some information on the different morphemic juncture markers that are used in this article: ’-’ marks
conjunct affixes, ‘=’ marks disjunct affixes and ‘==’ marks clitics. The distinction of these lies in the different
morphophonological processes that apply to them. I will not expand on these processes here.
5
I deliberately say that the major verbs come from a ‘relatively’ open class, as such open sets can be
restricted. For example, there are SVCs which combine a path verb (i.e. verbs that show where you’re going,
like ‘approach’ or ‘return’) and a manner verb (like ‘fly’, ‘walk’, ‘scurry,’ etc.), where the manner verb still belongs
to an open class, even though that class is smaller than the set of all verbs.

Page 34
 Another property of SVCs in Hapi is same-subject concordant marking; this means that in
such a predicate, person is marked concordantly (i.e. the same marker is attached to all SVC
components) on all verbs in the SVC. Cross-linguistically, there are several types of person
marking: there is (i) concordant marking of the same subject, e.g. in (6), (ii) concordant
marking of different underlying subjects as in (7a)6 , (iii) truncated same subject marking,
where one verb takes the normal person marker while the other one takes a truncated vari-
ant7 , (iv) optional concordant subject marking, where the subject may be marked on both
components, or just on one.8 However, some other grammatical categories are only marked
once per SVC. Those include, but are not limited to: most aspectual disjunct affixes, the
interrogative and imperative modes and the declarative disjunct;9 Tense exhibits optional
concordant marking, i.e. it can be marked once or on each component. An example for
those types of SVCs can be found in (10) and (11). In (10), the jussive mode is marked on
each component individually, while the intermediate past suffix -hi is only marked on the
first element of the SVC. In (11), the recent past marker -xí appears on each constituent,
while the declarative disjunct, as expected, is only attached to the last element.

(10) káakaa -hi =kóa kóó háá- áa -hi háá- xíihaxi háá- [Hapi]
hope -INT.PST =DECL C JUSS- say -INT.PST JUSS- tell.a.story JUSS-
títo
listen
“I myself was hoping you would tell me a story (before dinner)”

(11) tà xíxí - xí kókihíki - xí kàah - xí koíháa [Hapi]

1SG.S go.away - REC.PST to.fish - REC.PST kill - REC.PST go.home
-xí =kóa
-REC.PST =DECL
“[...] I went (with Atah) to go fishing”

Moving onto the next item of our list, cross-linguistically it is most often the case that com-
ponents of an SVC share at least one argument. While many serial verb constructions share
subjects, there is a special sort of constructions where the O of the first verb is the same as
the S of the second verb. Those are called ‘switch-function’ SVCs; a natlang example from
Oro Win for them can be seen in (12a), while the corresponding Hapi example is showcased
in (12b).

(12) a. awin pe’ pi’ n- an [Oro Win]

find sit completely 3SG.NFUT- 3N
“He set it down (lit. he found (itₒ itₛ) sat)” (Birchall, 2014, p122)
b. kó sapíí -a kòà aáxo -a =kóa [Hapi]
3M.SG.A put -2/3 3INAN.SG.O sit -2/3 =DECL
“He set it down (lit. he put (itₒ itₛ) sits down)”
6
Here, the two components have different underlying subjects but both receive the same surface subject
marker.
7
This appears in Dravidian languages, such as Koṇḍa (cf. Aikhenvald & Dixon, 2006, p41).
8
This type of subject marking can be observed in the Taba and Baule languages (Bowden, 2001, pp300-3
and N’Guessan, 2000, p78 respectively).
9
Note that e.g. the valency-modifying prefixes in slot -1 may encode their semantics separately; therefore,
the scope of these markers is limited to the verb on which they are attached to.

Page 35
 Hapi

Finally, the last property of SVCs in Hapi is that their components are linked asyndetically.
This means that there is no linking particle connecting the SVCs’ constituents. In contrast,
syndetic verb constructions are characterized by the linking clitic ==ó, which attaches to
every verb in the construction.

Semantics of Serial Verb Constructions

Serial verb constructions in Hapi yield a wide range of semantics which I will consider
in this section. Firstly, an SVC might express a sequence of actions or concomitant actions
related together; in that case, the order of constituents is iconic, i.e. it follows the tem-
poral sequence of the subevents. However, the predicate must describe subevents that are
regularly or habitually connected with each other. Compare the well-formedness of (13a)
and (13b). Since (13b) describes a habitual event, namely, the event of cooking a meal and
consuming it subsequently, the SVC is acceptable. (13a) on the other hand does not describe
a usual sequence of events, and is therefore infelicitious: its meaning may be described by
a sequential verb construction as in (13c), but not by an SVC.

(13) a. #kí -h katí -h =kóa =tíó [Hapi]

cook -1 dance -1 =DECL =INCH
Intended: “I started cooking and dancing”
b. kí -h kaxá -h =kóa =tíó [Hapi]
cook -1 eat -1 =DECL =INCH
“I started cooking and eating”
c. kí -h =kóa =tíó ==ó katí -h =kóa ==ó [Hapi]
cook -1 =DECL =INCH ==SEQ dance -1 =DECL ==SEQ
“I started cooking and dancing”

The next type of SVCs in the Hapi language is the cause-effect SVC. Once again, the compo-
nent order is iconic, meaning that the verb of causation precedes the verb referring to the
effect. This construction is showcased in example (14):

(14) páó káhixa -xí kóòxáo xa -xí =kóa [Hapi]

2SG.A hit -REC.PST broom break -REC.PST =DECL
“You broke the broom (lit.: [you hit it]-[it broke])”

The final type of SVCs in Hapi is the synonymous verb serializing SVC. In this construction,
all constituents are synonymous with each other, and express a special intensity or repetition
of the same action. While this is characteristic of Khwe languages, it also appears in Hapi.
(15) exemplifies this process:

(15) tópói -a kaxá -a sáá -a =kóa =tì [Hapi]

chew -2/3 eat.meat -2/3 eat.fruits -2/3 =DECL =AGAIN
“(He) is eating very much, over and over again (even though he’s full)”

There is another type of SVCs which does not appear in Hapi; nevertheless I will give a
brief summary of it, since this article is also meant to elucidate the nature of serial verb
constructions to you. Manner serial verb constructions can be found, among others, in

Page 36
Toqabaqita, Ewe and Khwe; in those constructions, one verb may describe the way in which
the action of the other verb was performed. An example for this can be found in (16), from
Toqabaqita:

(16) Wela e qiliano -na taqaa baqu [Toqabaqita]

child 3SG:NFUT pile.soil.around -3:O be.bad banana
“The child piled the soil around the banana tree badly” (Aikhenvald, 2006, p29)

SVC Lexicalization

Lexicalization is the process in which a grammatical construction is ‘standardized’ and

included into the language’s vocabulary as a set phrase or expression.10 (17) is an example
from Tariana. The construction ‘he sleeps-he eats-he walks around’ refers to going on a
longish hunting trip. In (18) from Hapi, the production of manioc beer is described by the
sequence ‘she sits down-she spits-she waits-she make bad’.

(17) dima di - hña di - emhani [Tariana]

3NFEM.SG+sleep 3NFEM.SG - eat 3NFEM.SG - walk.around
-pidana
-REM.PST.REP
“He went on a hunting or fishing trip for several days” (Aikhenvald, 2012, p310)

(18) akaxá - hi hàhi - hi kakí - hi kaai - hi [Hapi]

sit.down - INT.PST spit - INT.PST wait - INT.PST be.bad - INT.PST
-áh =kóa
-CAUS:NTR =DECL
“Last week, she made manioc beer”

So that’s about it for SVCs in Hapi. Now let’s move onto the second type of MVC in my
conlang, namely, auxiliary verb constructions.

Auxiliary Verb Constructions

Properties of Auxiliary Verb Constructions

Similarly to SVCs, auxiliary verb constructions (hereafter AVCs) vary in their shape and
functioning cross-linguistically. I have already mentioned asymmetrical SVCs above, and
AVCs are very similar to them. Basically, an AVC is composed of a lexical verb (corre-
sponding to the major verb in asymmetrical SVCs) and an auxiliary verb, which is “[...] an
item on the lexical verb-functional affix continuum, which tends to be at least somewhat
semantically bleached, and grammaticalized to express one or more of a range of salient
verbal categories” (Anderson, 2006, p4). Now that’s quite a dense passage, as is often the
case in linguistics.11 An auxiliary verb is a word which often doesn’t bear that much lexical
meaning anymore (i.e. it’s semantically bleached) and is used to convey the grammatical
meaning of a verbal category, such as aspect or mood.
10
Another important aspect of lexicalization is that the lexicalized construction gains a meaning that isn’t
compositionally predictable from its part.
11
The reason behind this is that authors try to be as concise as possible, which yields such sentences.

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 Hapi

AVCs in Hapi

Now that we have defined what an AVC is typologically, let’s take a look at such construc-
tions in Hapi. As I mentioned before, an AVC consists of two parts, a lexical part, and the
part that encodes grammatical information; in Hapi, it works that way too: there is a lexical
verb which carries the meaning and receives the dependent marker -i DEP, and there is an
auxiliary verb, which absorbs all the inflection that would normally go onto the main verb.
In (19), the basic structure of an AVC is exemplified.

(19) hó -h kì- kahoó hóika - i tóó - xí -∅ [Hapi]

man’s.name - ERG 3SG.POSS- boat build - DEP PROG - REC.PST - 2/3
=kóa
=DECL
“Joe was constructing his boat [...]”

In this example, hóika is the lexical verb — as it carries the meaning — and tóó is the
auxiliary, which expresses grammatical information, in this case the progressive aspect. As
expected, hóika takes the dependent marker -i and tóó absorbs all the inflection.

Now, there are two types of auxiliaries in the Hapi language. There are non-prefixing
auxiliaries (like you’ve just seen in example (19)), and prefixing auxiliaries. Prefixing aux-
iliaries work very differently from regular, non-prefixing auxiliaries. In a construction with
a prefixing auxiliary, the lexical verb is attached to the auxiliary, and all the inflection is
taken up by another auxiliary. This second auxiliary verb has a fixed form; it is always tàa.
Example (20) shows how prefixing auxiliaries work:

(20) páó híí kaxá= hákoo tàa -a =ka [Hapi]

2SG:A meal eat = OBLIG AUX -2/3 =DECL
“You must eat your meal (or else you will be hungry later)”

In this example, the lexical verb kaxá is prefixed to the modal auxiliary hákoo, while
the fixed auxiliary tàa takes up all the other inflection. To negate an auxiliary, the prefix
kaí= is used.12 An example for a negated prefixing auxiliary is given in (21); negating
non-prefixing auxiliaries works accordingly.

(21) kóíhi -hóo ahá háa= kaí= hákoo a- tàa [Hapi]

forest -LOC alone go= NEG= OBLIG PSV- AUX
“One shouldn’t go into the forest alone”

Now let’s move onto the semantics of AVCs.

AVC Semantics

In Hapi, AVCs can express a range of different meanings, most of them belonging to the
grammatical category of aspect; however there are also negation and modality auxiliaries.
So far there are six auxiliaries documented in the main corpus;13 this data might vary from
12
This form is derived from the negation auxiliary kaíhao, which I mention below.
13
Therefore I will only focus on them in this study.

Page 38
author to author, and more research has to be conducted in this field. In this section I
will present the semantics of AVCs in Hapi, as well as give an overview of what AVCs may
express cross-linguistically.

Probably the most widely used auxiliaries in Hapi are the two negating auxiliaries. While
both of them negate the verb they are affecting, they differ in that one of them is used in
past clauses, while the other one is used in non-past contexts. The form of the former is
kaíhao, while the non-past auxiliary verb is pí. Examples (22a) and (22b) showcase the
functioning of these auxiliaries.

(22) a. tàahopí ==áki pàah póhi táahi -i pí =kóa [Hapi]

1.INCL.A ==PERM water sacred drink -DEP NEG.NPST =DECL
“We aren’t allowed to drink the holy water”
b. póxihoo sóóha -i sóí -i í- kaíhao -tóhi =kóa [Hapi]
2 do.like.this -NTR dream -DEP Q- NEG.PST -DIS.PST =DECL
“Haven’t you ever dreamt like this?”

In colloquial speech, the negative auxiliaries are often dropped, leaving the lexical verb
with its suffix marker -i. The result of this process may be analyzed as insubordination.14
An example for this is given in (23).

(23) patía -h xòih -ìih hóí -hi =kóa tapáxi haí [Hapi]
woman’s.name -ERG brother -DAT give -INT.PST =DECL candy therefore
ài -i
do -DEP
“Maria gave my brother a sweet so that I wouldn’t have to”

The whole construction using negative auxiliaries with a subordination marker might seem
familiar to some of you, especially to those of you who have dealt with Uralic languages.
This is because in some Uralic languages, negative polarity may also be expressed by an
auxiliary verb, which then forces the lexical verb to take the so-called co(n)negative, a kind
of dependent form; this construction inspired me to create a similar negation strategy in
Hapi. An example for this from the Samoyedic language Kamass is given in (24).

(24) e -m nere -ʔ [Kamass]

NEG -1 be.frightened -CONNEG
“I am not, will not be frightened” (Künnap, 1999b, p25, in Anderson 2012)

Now back to AVCs in Hapi. Some aspects are also marked by auxiliaries; those are the
progressive/habitual and the perfective aspect, marked by tóó and kii respectively. An
example for an aspectual AVC is given in (25).

(25) tàah kohaíkoa -i kii -hi -∅ =kóa há tàsóo [Hapi]

1SG.A dig.a.hole -DEP PERF -INT.PST -2/3 =DECL EGO 1SG.INSTR
“I dug a hole all by myself”
14
This syntactic phenomenon describes a case where morphology that normally marks subordinate clauses
appears in independent clauses. If you want to know more about this check out this paper.

Page 39
 Hapi

Other features marked by auxiliaries in the Hapi language include obligative modality (cf.
(21)) and the verbal diminutive. For the sake of brevity I shall not expand on these here.

Cross-linguistically, aspect, negation and modality are not the only grammatical categories
marked by AVCs. Other such categories include tense (26), voice (27) and ‘adverbial’ func-
tions (28).

(26) i -te a- pupun [Canela-Krahô]

1 -PST 2- see
“I saw you” (Popjes & Popjes, 1986, p130, in Anderson 2012)
(27) bebí déh- wʼa ‘ah -lá [Slave]
baby 3- burp 1 -CAUS
“I burped the baby” (Rice, 2000, p209, in Anderson 2012)
(28) ɔ̀ - ʔɔtɔ tʃá -î ɛpɔ́ [Eleme]
2- AUX run -2PL afraid
“you became very afraid” (Anderson, 2012, p37)

Inflection and Headedness

Now let’s take a closer look at the typology of AVCs, especially the inflection and headed-
ness of these constructions. As I’ve stated above, all the inflection of a verb gets moved onto
the auxiliary verb in non-prefixing AVCs, and onto tàa in prefixing ones. Cross-linguistically,
there are different patterns a language’s AVC may fall into. Those are the AUX-headed pat-
tern, the doubled pattern, the LEX-headed pattern and the split pattern.15 In an AUX-headed
construction, the auxiliary verb is the inflectional head, like in Hapi. In a doubled pattern,
both the auxiliary and the lexical verb are co-heads and share the inflection, while with a
LEX-headed pattern, the lexical verb is the sole inflectional head. A split pattern may be
observed when the inflection is split between the lexical verb and the auxiliary according
to certain criteria. In (29) a AUX-headed pattern is exemplified, (30) showcases LEX-headed
constructions; example (31) presents the functioning of a doubled pattern and (32) does so
with a split pattern.

(29) klə -kə lɨ -kə -wɨn [Iatmul]

get -DEP AUX -PRS -1SG
“I am getting it” (Foley, 1986, p144, in Anderson 2012)
(30) nga- ion -i koho [Kaulong]
1R- know -TR PRF
“I already know it” (Ross, 2002, p401, in Anderson 2012)
(31) miŋ ne- gaʔ -ru ne- laʔ -ru [Gorum]
I 1- eat -PST 1- AUX -PST
“I ate vigorously” (Aze, 1973, p279, in Anderson 2012)
(32) šk -ach w- ila [Jacaltec]
CMPL -ABS.2 ERG.1- see
“I saw you” (Craig 1977, p60, in Anderson 2012)
15
There’s also an additional pattern called the split/doubled pattern, but for brevity’s sake I won’t consider
that here.

Page 40
 In (29), the similarities to Hapi are uncanny: the lexical verb takes the dependent form,
while the auxiliary is the inflectional head (cf. the example from Hapi in (25)). In example
(30), the lexical verb takes up all the inflectional markers, while the auxiliary koho PRF
remains morphologically unmodified. The doubled pattern in (31) is pretty straight-forward:
both the auxiliary and the lexical verb take the same inflectional markers. The example in
(32) is a bit more complex. Here, the O is marked on the auxiliary, while the A is marked
on the lexical verb, making this example follow the split pattern.

This concludes my presentation of AVCs. Next up, I’ll consider the third and last type of
MVCs, syndetic verb constructions.

Syndetic Verb Constructions

The main characteristic of this type of MVC is the presence of an overt linking clitic, ==ó,
which is glossed as ==LINK or more commonly, ==SEQ. This is where the most prominent
morphosyntactic distinction between SynVCs and other MVCs lies: there is a coordinating
morpheme connecting the MVC’s constituents. This is why I named this type of construction
‘syndetic’; there is a coordinator, just like in usual coordinating constructions.

So how do SynVCs work? It’s pretty simple. Since the sequential linker ==ó is a clitic,
it attaches to the predicate on the phrase-level. This may sound complicated, but it really
isn’t. In most cases, it means that clitics appears directly after the verb, or, when there’s
a core argument coming after it, they attach to that. An example for this is given in (33),
where the visual evidential clitic is attached to the postverbal argument, which is, in this
case, the object. In (34) there is only a peripheral argument, and the clitic attaches to the
verb itself.16

(33) tàhòhí -h kàah -xí =kóa síiti ==to [Hapi]

poison -ERG kill -REC.PST =DECL monkey.species ==VIS
“I saw that earlier today, the poison (of a dart) killed an uakari monkey”

(34) hoó a- sáá -hàò =kóa ==pò xáoh -aóh -tah [Hapi]
3F.SG.O PSV- eat -DIS.PST =DECL ==INFER crab -AUG -PERL
“She was eaten by a huge crab, they told me”

In a SynVC, ==ó is attached to every component of the construction. This is exemplified

in (35). Here, there are two verbal components, and each of them receives the coordinator.

(35) tà hóíka -tah háa -h -o == ó xóati -h -o haího -soa [Hapi]

1SG.S big.tree -PERL go -1 -FUT == SEQ search.for -1 -FUT berry -PL
==ó há
==SEQ EGO
“I’ll be going via the big tree, and then search for berries (there)”

In a marginal case, a SynVC may only consist of a single verb phrase. This case, show-
cased in example (36), is very rare and is only seldomly used by the elderly. The meaning
associated with that is to establish a causal relationship with a previously introduced topic.
16
I shall not expand on Hapi syntax here, as it would go beyond the scope of this article.

Page 41
 Hapi

(36) hóaxáko taíí kohaa toih -a =ka ==ó [Hapi]

3 glass hole open -2/3 =DECL ==SEQ
“That’s because it is him/her who is opening the window”

Next up, I’ll give a brief overview of the semantics associated with SynVCs in Hapi.

The Semantics of SynVCs

The semantics of SynVCs in Hapi are quite straight-forward and you might have already
inferred it from previous examples in this article. Basically, SynVCs are used to convey a
sequential, iconic reading of the predicates that the construction is composed of. ‘Sequential’
means that the actions expressed by the predicates are happening one after another, while
‘iconic’ means that the actions happen in the same order as they appear in speech.17 (37) is
another example for SynVCs in Hapi.

(37) xóíi kipá sóh tàhokó hó- xóati -hi =kóa [Hapi]
FRUST.NTR woman’s.name with 1.EXCL.S ANTIP- search -INT.PST =DECL
==ó tapí -h ohá -hi -áh =kóa tohípi
==SEQ man’s.name -ERG run -INT.PST -CAUS.NTR =DECL willingness
-sáahi ==ó híó káhxì -hi =kóa =kah
-PRIV ==SEQ but.DS catch -INT.PST =DECL =PUNCT
“I went in vain to search (it) with Kipá and Tapí let (it) escape but I caught it18 ”

As can be seen in (37), the different constituents of a SynVC need not have an argument in
common and may be fully independent regarding their argument-structure. This concludes
the discussion of SynVCs in Hapi.19

Coda
In what has preceded I have discussed the various types of multiverb constructions, in-
cluding serial verb constructions (SVCs), auxiliary verb constructions (AVCs) and finally
syndetic verb constructions (SynVCs). However there’s another marginal member on the
MVC spectrum: switch-reference constructions. I didn’t include these because I could’ve
easily written a whole nother article about that topic alone. Special thanks to miacomet,
Nake, Astianthus, mareck and Meadow for inspiring me to write this article, as well as to
Lichen for helping me condense my introduction.

Got any questions regarding MVCs in Hapi or the process behind constructing them? Did
you find a typo or mistake I made? Have you got similar constructions in your own conlang?
Reach out to me on Reddit at u/tryddle or on Discord at tryddle#9377 and I’ll be glad to
respond to you! Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this article! Fiat Lingua!
17
An example for a construction that is not iconic might be some converbal constructions. If you’re not
familiar with these, you can check out Haspelmath & König’s 1995 Converbs in cross-linguistic perspective.
18
You might be confused on why the sequential linker here comes after tohípisáahi, a non-core argument.
This is because in recent years, a construction using tohípisáahi in combination with a causative has gram-
maticalized to express the meaning that the action has been conducted without further involvement of the A,
cf. the English ‘let’-construction.
19
You might’ve noticed how there aren’t any examples from other natlangs in this section. That is because
while such constructions may exist in some other languages, they’re often very distinct in their typological
characteristics; while some of these similar constructions have been mentioned in Aikhenvald & Dixon 2006,
the authors did not expand on that topic.

Page 42
Appendix I: Sources20
• Aikhenvald, A.Y., & Dixon, R. M. (2006). Serial verb constructions: A cross-linguistic
typology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Aikhenvald, A. Y. (2017). Serial Verb Constructions in Amazonian Languages. Retrieved
March 23, 2021, from https://www.academia.edu/35071640
• Aikhenvald, A. Y. (2012). The Languages of the Amazon. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
• Bowden, J. (2001). Taba: Description of a South Halmahera Language. Pacific Lin-
guistics, 521. Australian National University.
• N’Guessan, J. (2000). Les séries verbales en Baoulé questions de morphosyntaxe et de
sémantique. Studies In African Linguistics, 29(1), 76-90.
• Birchall, J. (2014). The multi-verb benefactive construction in Wari’ and Oro Win.
Incremento De Valencia En Las Lenguas Amazónicas, 115-33.
• Anderson, G. (2012). Auxiliary verb constructions. Oxford University Press.
• Künapp, A. (1999). Kamass. Languages of the World/Materials 185.
• Popjes, J., & Popjes, J. (1986). Canela-Krahô. Handbook of Amazonian languages, 1,
128-99.
• Rice, K. (2000). Voice and valency in the Athapaskan family. Changing Valency: Case
Studies in Transitivity, 173-235.
• Foley, W. (1986). The Papuan Languages of New Guinea. Cambridge University Press.
• Crowley, T., Lynch, J., & Ross, M. (2002). The Oceanic Languages (pp. 387-409).
Curzon.
• Aze, R. (1973). Clause patterns in Parengi-Gorum. Patterns In Clause, Sentence, Dis-
course In Selected Languages Of India And Nepal, 253-312.
• Craig, C. (1977). The Structure of Jacaltec. University of Texas Press.
• Haspelmath, M. (2004). Coordinating constructions. J. Benjamins Publishing.
• u/tryddle. (2021). ’We can’t say it with one word’ - Serial Verb Constructions in Hapi. red-
dit. Retrieved 23 May 2021, from https://www.reddit.com/r/conlangs/comments/meiyw2.
• Evans, N. (2007). Insubordination and its uses. In I. Nikolaeva, Finiteness: Theoretical
and Empirical Foundations (pp. 366-431). Oxford University Press. Retrieved 23 May
2021, from.

20
I have included primary sources as well, in case you want to dive deeper into the presented languages.

Page 43
 05 Lexical Aspect in Yajéé

by P. A. Lewis (u/ratsawn)

Telicity and Its Applications

One of the Yajéé language’s most interesting features is its way of dealing with verb phrase
telicity. This is a feature that a speaker must consider when constructing any clause, because
the telicity of a verb phrase alters the semantics of the grammatical aspects, and it can
sometimes even change the uses of case markers.

What is Telicity?
In case a definition is needed, telicity is the state of completeness that a verb phrase is in.
A verb phrase is considered to be telic if it has a clearly defined end point, and atelic if it
has no such end point defined. In English this can most easily be tested for using the phrase
‘for an hour’. If you can add this phrase to a clause, it is most often atelic. A telic clause
would require this phrase to be modified to ‘in an hour’. For example, ‘John ate apples in ten
minutes’ sounds funky, but ‘John ate apples for ten minutes’ sounds much more natural. This
distinction is heavily present in Yajéé and grammaticalized to a significant extent.

Inherent Telicity
In Yajéé, every verb has a number of features inherent to it. Many are familiar to us and
are used in most languages, such as argument structure and transitivity.1 However, in Yajéé
an additional parameter is needed: inherent telicity. I specify “inherent” here because this
can be changed through derivation, as we’ll see in later sections.

The telicity of a verb or verb phrase can be defined as one of three choices: stative, atelic,
or telic.2 Luckily for the learner, and for our analysis, the inherent telicity of a verb is
1
Though this is barely a factor in Yajéé, as pronoun dropping in subject, object, and even oblique positions
makes transitivity nearly irrelevant.
2
While a stative verb is always technically atelic, stative verbs have no formal relation to atelic ones. Think
of the split as a two way split between active and stative, with a further distinction made within the active
group.

Page 45
 Yajéé

often what your intuition would guide you to. For example, the verb na ‘to believe’ is inher-
ently stative, resas ‘to dig’ is inherently atelic, and rajem ‘to fall, to kill’ is inherently telic.
However, this distinction is just something that has to be memorized most of the time.

(1) Ni tá ṭayár is chínár chega.

ni tá ṭayár is chínár chega
believe.PFV 1.SG exist.IPFV PROX.DEM king SUB
“I believe that he is the king.”

(2) Resas ṣebída.

resas ṣebída
dig.IPFV yesterday
“I was digging yesterday.”

(3) Rajimbiba ṣa is wagwomodosómá’.

rajim -iba ṣa is wagwómo -somá’
kill -INC day PROX.DEM moa -PTV
“I almost killed a moa today.”

Changing the Telicity

A close look at the above examples reveals that inherent telicity is fragile. The introduction
of only a word or two can change the telicity of the clause. For instance, if example 2 was
changed to something like ‘I dug up a body yesterday,’ the verb phrase becomes telic. Yajéé
handles this with four derivational verbal prefixes:

Telic to Atelic ii-/in-

Stative to Atelic kwümah(e)-
To Telic ḷ(a)-
To Stative kwún(a)-
Table 1: Telicity Derivations

These derivations are transparently related to independent lexemes in the language, as

this system was only developed around 120 years before the current state of the language.3
These lexemes are:

• ii ‘about, along, around’

• kwümiṇah ‘to grow, to develop’
• ḷa ‘one, once’
• kwúna ‘to sit’

Perhaps an in-depth discussion of the semantic motivations behind these words being used
here is in order, but that would do little to explain their uses. Why don’t we start with that
sentence above?
3
In fact, this entire article would be meaningless in the Hegwüü dialect, which does not use this system.

Page 46
(4) Ḷaresesimár ṣebída resasamuurogáṣ par.
ḷa- reses -imár ṣebída resasamuur -gáṣ par
TEL- dig -CESS yesterday dead.man -ACC into
“I dug up a body yesterday.”

Example 4 shows the verb resas ‘to dig’ being used with the telic derivational prefix, form-
ing the word ḷaresas ‘to unearth, to bury.’ 4 This is accompanied by an aspect shift, which
will be discussed in the next section.

The pattern of derivations changing semantics extends to various lexemes. While most
of the time the prefixes are used to accomplish grammatical alterations or accommodate
adverbs which change the telicity of a clause, some, like ḷaresas above, change the semantics
of a verb in a much more pure sense. For example, consider the following pairs5 :

kąnow ‘to be strong’ ḷagąnow ‘to lift’

kwúna ‘to sit’ kwümahegwúna ‘to ride’
em ‘to pull’ inem ‘to suck’
lür ‘to give’ kwúnalür ‘to be generous’

These word pairs illustrate the rich derivational capacity of the Yajéé system, making sev-
eral lexemes from small numbers of roots. A few patterns jump out: Statives generally
become actions characterized by the state when active; active verbs most often have a ha-
bitual meaning or become an adjective associated with the action; and while telic and atelic
mostly overlap semantically, telic verbs generally describe less time-intensive tasks than
atelic ones (such as ‘come’ versus ‘arrive’ or something similar).

Effects on Other Morphology

Grammatical Aspect

Yajéé’s verbal inflection in finite clauses is limited to only four aspectual distinctions, using
two main verb stems: the imperfective stem (Si ) and the perfective stem (Sp ).

Perfective Sp
Imperfective Si
Inceptive Sp -iba
Cessative Sp -imár
Table 2: Grammatical Aspects

This is clearly not very expressive without periphrastic or lexical constructions, and this is
one of the reasons the Hegwüü dialect uses several auxiliary verbs to encode more specific
aspects. However, in the standard language this is heavily mitigated by the way telicity
alters the semantics of the four grammatical aspects.
4
Despite being semantically its own antonym, this word would never be ambiguous due to the differing
argument structures between its two meanings.
5
These definitions are often misleading, as many words do not map to a single English word or idea very
well. For example, the atelic verb inem is defined here as ‘to suck’, but obviously a sentence like ‘I sucked out
every drop’ is telic again. This would use the telic form em, possibly with an adverbial or oblique to confirm
the intended meaning.

Page 47
 Yajéé

Stative Atelic Telic

Perfective Stative Perfective N/A
Imperfective Gnomic Imperfective
Inceptive Inchoative Inceptive Defective
Cessative N/A Cessative Perfective
Table 3: Aspect + Telicity Realizations

This makes the range of expression much more free for a Yajéé speaker. Important to note
is that the telicity referenced here is the verb phrase telicity (i.e. the telicity after derivation),
not necessarily the inherent telicity. This means that expressing the same idea with a verb
root versus a derived form can often be expressed with a different affix. For example, ‘pulled’
is imbimár (the perfective stem of em with the cessative suffix) and ‘sucked’ is inim (the
perfective stem of em with the Telic>Atelic prefix), despite both coming from the same
root.

To define, stative refers to describing a temporary state, while gnomic refers to a perma-
nent state or quality. Inchoative is the entering into a state, while inceptive is entering into
an action. Perfective describes an action from the view of the whole action, while imper-
fective describes an action from a perspective of the action as ongoing, or within the action.
Cessative describes the conclusion of an action. Defective describes an action that is nearly,
or almost, completed.

A major caveat to this analysis is the state of the inceptive and cessative aspect markers.
By the semantic nature of these affixes, all clauses formed with them are telic, and so no
derivations will be used unless for semantic purposes. This means that the realizations of
the suffixes semantically (i.e. whether the inceptive suffix encodes an inceptive, inchoative,
or defective meaning) is determined by the inherent telicity of the verb.

(5) Chíbádériba Hamaragáṣ.

chíbádér -iba Hamar -gáṣ

go.PFV -INC NAME -ACC

“He started to go to Hamar.”

Note that adding the telic prefix to form the sentence Ḷachíbádériba Hamaragáṣ would
change the meaning of the verb, not to mention place it in the wrong aspect. This sentence
would sound a bit clunky to a native speaker, but would probably be understood as ‘He
almost took a trip to Hamar.’

Nominal Semantics

Consider the phrases ‘I hit a tree’ and ‘I hit trees.’ If you run the telicity test from the
beginning, you’ll find that the first is telic, while the second is atelic. The simple act of
changing the number of the object changed the telicity of the entire phrase, altering the
verb from describing a single action to describing a series of them. In Yajéé, this distinction
is accomplished not by number, but by telicity derivations.

Page 48
(6) Imbimár wayegáṣ.
im -imár way -gáṣ
steal -CESS fish -ACC
“I stole a fish.”

(7) Inim wayegáṣ

in- im way -gáṣ
A- steal.PFV fish -ACC
“I stole fish.”

By changing the telicity of this type of clause, ii- serves to make the object, mo, plural.
While this is not ubiquitous as a plural marker,6 it can often function as one in atelic clauses
that describe a repeated action acting on multiple patients.

In addition to creating new distinctions, this specific derivation can also resolve ambiguity
in the noun case system. The partitive case has three main uses: it describes an indefinite
amount or portion of a noun (i.e. some of X), it marks animate direct objects, and in Mainland
Yajéé, it is used to reintroduce the agent in a passive construction. We’ll be focusing on the
first two.

(8) Rajimbimár kwongwosomá’ simę̈s.

rajim -imár kwon -somá’ si -mę̈s
kill -CESS pig -PTV 1.PL -DAT
“He killed us a pig.”

(9) Iirajim kwongwosomá’ simę̈s.

ii- rajim kwon -somá’ si -mę̈s
A- kill pig -PTV 1.PL -DAT
“He killed us some pigs.”

These examples are more or less in the same vein as the previous two, as the plurality of
the object is encoded more so in the derivation than in the case. In example 9, the noun
phrase kwongwosomá’ must be analyzed as ‘some pigs.’ This is because, in order for the
phrase to still mean ‘a pig,’ the atelic derivation would have to be removed. The prefix in
this example solidifies the meaning of the partitive case.

While this only works with ii-, it is worth noting the alterations these affixes can cause.
Yajéé has a large amount of argument dropping, especially in discourse, and often these
prefixes are the only way of discerning the intended arguments from the supply of potential
referents.

Effect on Discourse
For example, if a discourse was a story about two friends taking turns attempting to ride a
moa7 , the speaker may say Hedǫsoo tá kwǘnejiba ‘I started to sit on the ground as I watched
6
Yajéé has daughter languages which have grammaticalized this distinction into all clauses as an obligate
plural marker of the object.
7
very unsafe, would not recommend

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 Yajéé

him,’ omitting the arguments ‘the ground’ and ‘him,’ but both are perfectly understandable
in the discourse.

However, the speaker could have said Hedǫsoo tá kwümahegwǘnejiba ‘I started to ride
the moa as I watched him.’ This omits arguments in all the same places as the previous
statement, but because the derivation disallows ‘the ground’ from being its object, ‘the moa’
is the only appropriate object for the verb in this simple discourse.

(10) Hedǫsoo tá kwǘnejiba.

hed -ǫsoo tá kwǘne -iba
see -IPFV.CVB 1.SG sit -INC
“I started to sit (on the ground) as I watched (him).”

(11) Hedǫsoo tá kwümahegwǘnejiba.

hed -ǫsoo tá kwümahe- kwǘne -iba
see -IPFV.CVB 1.SG A- sit -INC
“I started to ride (the moa) as I watched (him).”

Examples like these are incredibly common in discourse, and we are only just scratching
the surface of the argument dropping that makes Yajéé such a pain for foreign learners.
Often a single pronoun can cover several different grammatical roles with only one mention
depending on the nature of the various clauses.

I hope this has given the reader a good look at how telicity invades every clause in Yajéé,
and how it makes constructing sentences both an immense challenge and a beautiful art
form.

Thank you for reading.

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 Being and doing in
06 Tengkolaku

by Steve Gustafson (u/IHCOYC)

Verbal Constructions

Tengkolaku, a language isolate spoken by people who call themselves Iwi on Palau Tengko-
rak, or ‘Skull Island’, has a strongly analytic grammar with few derivational or morphological
processes that occur within the boundaries of a word. Instead, the grammatical heavy lifting
is done entirely by particles, bound but separate morphemes that at least in theory can be
attached to any lexical word. These particles indicate the grammatical role of the words
that precede them.

The basics of Tengkolaku syntax

The concept of ‘parts of speech’ is different in Tengkolaku than it is for many other lan-
guages. ‘Nouns’ are not differentiated from ‘verbs’ by their external form, endings, or any
other difference in form. Rather, the chief division between Tengkolaku words is between
‘lexical’ or ‘content words’, that refer to persons, things, or actions; and ‘function words’,
the particles that specify grammatical relations.

Among the function words, the primary distinction is between ‘phrase builders’, which
include things like conjunctions and possessive markers; and ‘final’ or ‘top’ particles, that
place the foregoing word or words in a specific grammatical relation. Phrases marked with
top particles function as independent grammatical units. Pragmatics, rather than any formal
requirements, determine where they appear in a sentence.

Lack of a copula, and its consequences

Tengkolaku is a zero copula language; there is no word that fulfils the office of the En-
glish verb ‘to be’. In its place, the default and unmarked ‘mode’ or ‘tense’ in Tengkolaku is
the ‘gnomic’, for statements that do not require other marking for tense, aspect, mode, or
evidentiality (TAME). The default and unmarked ‘case’ in Tengkolaku could be called the
‘equative’, or ‘appositional’, ‘similiative’ or ‘definitional’ case, which describes one word in
terms of another. Since there is no independent verb ‘to be’ to bear the burden of TAME,
when those things are needed the lexical words must carry them.

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 Tengkolaku

An apparently ‘noun’-like Tengkolaku word like nenebe nenebe ‘house’ can also be in-
terpreted as a verb (‘to be a house’, ‘it’s a house’, ‘they are houses’) and can be marked for
categories like tense. Similarly, an apparently ‘verb’ like Tengkolaku word like fia ngia
‘go’ can also serve as a noun (‘going, travel, journey’).

The finite verb complex

Statements in which one participant experiences something or acts on another usually
contain finite verb phrases in Tengkolaku. A finite verb clause in Tengkolaku takes any of
three arguments, each of which has a distinctive set of particles:

• a patient or experiencer, always indicated by an an;

• a benefactive or dative, always indicated by nel nel; and
• an agent, indicated by kel kel (animate beings with agency) or kam kam (inanimate
beings without agency).

Finite verbs must have at least one verbal particle that specifies an aspect of TAME. The
phrase defined by that particle is a finite verb phrase.

These particles that supply arguments to the finite verb do not differ in syntax or ap-
pearance from locative and other particles that supply descriptive data to a sentence. Thus
nenebe an nenebe an ‘house P’ indicating that a house was a patient or ‘experiencer’ of
some action, is not formally different from nenebe lax nenebe lā ‘house LOC’, ‘at (the/a)
house’.

The role of topic marking

Strong topic marking is another basic feature of Tengkolaku syntax. Topics in Tengkolaku
can be marked pragmatically, by appearing in the conspicuous first or last positions in a
sentence. More importantly, they can be marked explicitly, using the particle yi yi, the
topic marker. Yi also contrasts with men men, the ‘antitopic’ marker, usually glossed as
‘obviative’, that indicates a second participant. In any Tengkolaku narrative of any length
with multiple participants, marked topics and antitopics are very likely.

The topic marker and antitopic marker are then available to use as pronouns, referring back
to the participants they referred to when they were introduced. This is also a handy feature
since the canonical personal pronouns, especially first and second person, are considered
impolite in conversation. The marked topic, but not the antitopic, also serves as a default
argument that should be supplied when needed; ‘missing’ arguments are about the topic.

The interplay between topic marking, obviative marking, equative statements, and finite
verb statements can be illustrated by the following passage.

(1) watu em :: kawlu yi |

kawlu te impa nay :: wa duxi gau :: wa neba men an muo us ::
men te nawi no yi |
Watu em, kawlu yi. Kawlu te impa nay, wa dūi gau, wa neba men an muo us,
men te nawi no yi.

watu em kawlu yi kawlu te impa nay wa dūi gau

beginning BEFORE turtle TOP turtle AND alone ADV NEXT look IPFV

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 wa neba men an muo us men te nawi no yi
NEXT neighbor OBV P see PF OBV AND mother INAL TOP
“Before the beginning, there was this turtle. And the turtle was alone; and he looked
around, and he saw his neighbor, which was his mother.”

Two finite verb phrases are used in this passage: wa duxi gau :: neba men an
muo us wa dūi gau, wa neba men an muo us ‘and he looked around, and he saw his
neighbor.’ No patient is specified in the first finite verb phrase, despite the existence of an
experiencer. No agent is specified in the second verb phrase despite its transitive meaning;
the patient introduces a new character. Because there is a marked topic, these arguments
can be omitted. The marked topic becomes the participant of each.

This statement introduces a second participant in the narrative; so while the turtle is
marked at the outset as topic, the neighbor is likewise marked as antitopic or ‘obviative’
(neba men an neba men an). Both the topic and antitopic markers are then avail-
able for use as pronouns to refer to their original referents (men te nawi no yi men te
nawi no yi ‘which was his mother’).

As such, it may not be obvious to speakers of English and similar languages which state-
ments in Tengkolaku require finite verb phrases with patients and agents, and which do not.
The purpose of this article is to illustrate the difference.

Being: the equative statment

The simplest sort of sentence in Tengkolaku simply asserts something’s presence or exis-
tence:

(2) oka |
oka
snake

This could be rendered in English as ‘There is a snake’, ‘a snake is here’, ‘it is a snake’, or
simply as an exclamation: ‘Snake!’ But this latter exclamation might be better made with
formal topic marking:

(3) oka yi |
oka yi!
snake TOP

Formally marking a topic in a statement like this calls attention to the fact that the snake’s
presence is important and something that should be noted by the addressee. It also means
that anything the speaker says afterwords should be understood as referring to the snake.
Tengkolaku predicates can be made more complex:

(4) iki nenebe |

iki nenebe
here house
“Here is a house.”
Or: “This is a house.”

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 Tengkolaku

So what happens when it is desired to add tense to these basic statements? Again, because
Tengkolaku is resolutely a zero copula language, tense can be added to any lexical word:

(5) iki nenebe us |

iki nenebe us
here house PF

‘This once was a house’, ‘There used to be a house here’, ‘This was a house’ are all plausible
renditions of this Tengkolaku statement in English.

On this wise, there is no clearly demarcated class of ‘adjective’ in Tengkolaku. Pragmatics,

rather than formal grammar, order the constituents of descriptive phrases:

(6) mauf adamu |

maung adamu
cat large
“(A/The) cat is large”
Or: “This is a big cat”
Or: “There’s a big cat.”

Fronting the descriptive predicate here sounds slightly odd but is not forbidden:

(7) adamu mauf |

adamu maung
large cat

This invites an English rendition such as ‘The big thing is a cat.’ It answers questions like:

(8) kuli adamu |

kuli adamu?
what large
“What is that big thing?”

Tense marking is done the same way as with nouns in apposition.

(9) mauf adamu sili :: wamifi gan gipi mefi kilo an |

maung adamu sili, wamingi gan gipi mengi kilo an.
cat large FUT, eat PRS mouse PL too.many P
“The cat will be big, it’s eating too many mice.”
Or: “… too many mice are being eaten.”

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 The second clause of this sentence is a finite verb clause with a pragmatically marked topic
as agent; it’s obvious the speaker is still talking about the cat.

So long as the basic equative, existential, or appositional character of the sentence is main-
tained, aspects and modes can be added, including those suggesting that the topic is an
experiencer or patient of some process:

(10) tolox baniatoxnis tinde |

tolō baniatōnis tinde
tree green become
“A tree is turning green.”
Or: “Trees are turning green.”

So also are equative statements which are phrased as exhortations or commands:

(11) kokax tu |
kokā tu!
ready JUSS
“Get ready!”

(12) onsa siku tu |

Onsa siku tu!
tiger like JUSS
“Be like a tiger!”

(13) fodam wel balana |

ngodam wel, balana
sleep OPT child
“Sleep, child.”
Or: “Let the child sleep.”

So can statements reflecting personal experience; these, too, do not require patients or
agents so long as the content of the sentence is identity, existence, description, or definition:

(14) idemux fis lafo sau |

idemū ngis lango sau
rotten CHANGE PST.DIS EXP
“I know it turned rotten a long time ago.”

(15) ufi na kafe yi nos |

ungi na kange yi nos
son POSS sky TOP 1P
“I am the Son of Heaven.”

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 Tengkolaku

III. Doing: the finite verb

Consider, for a moment, the English sentence ‘Cats eat mice.’ English speakers will interpret
this sentence as a general statement about the habits of cats. The ‘simple present’ in English
is no longer a simple present, but is used to describe general tendencies and habits instead.
Still, the English general truism about cats requires a grammatical subject, a finite verb, and
a direct object. Tengkolaku here offers choices.

How would such a sentence be rendered in Tengkolaku? Probably the better notional
translation would be to make it a statement of being:

(16) gipi wamifi na mauf |

gipi wamingi na maung
mouse food POSS cat
“Mice (are) the food of cats.”

Since Tengkolaku does not obligately mark plurality, this sentence is a gnomic statement
about the habits of cats; mice are things they eat. This translation does not follow the English
syntax, and a more literal translation of the English that mirrors the English syntax would
be:

(17) gipi an wamifi gan mauf kel |

gipi an wamingi gan maung kel
mouse P eat GNO cat A

This too means ‘cats eat mice’, but with a slightly different focus; the mice are pointed
out as victims of the habits of cats, and the agency of the cat in eating the mouse is also
highlighted. Its force is closer to ‘(the) cats are always eating mice.’

By using a marker that indicates TAME, statements in the gnomic mode and present imper-
fect tense may be made using agents and patients, even as perfectivity and other categories
of mood and tense can be added to equative statements. And labelling a patient, agent, or
benefactive may be omitted in at least some sentences in Tengkolaku that include a finite
verb.

In Tengkolaku, the patient role applies to voluntary and intentional acts undertaken by
human and animate actors:

(18) enlilna an imemi win fia gau |

enlilna an imemi win ngia gau
queen P town towards go PRS.IPFV
“(The/A) queen is going towards the town.”

When no second argument is possible, the sole argument is designated as patient or experi-
encer even if there is no actual experiencer or the only possible experiencer is an unidentified
third party:

Page 56
(19) lupai an exliu us :: aifa an imupim oye |
lupai an ēliu us; ainga an imupim oye
shot P hear PF; servant P cry NEXT
“A shot rang out; the maid screamed.”

In sentences like these, the nominal constituents are their own patients because no partic-
ipant in the action is available to be cast in the role of agent.

In the same light, consider the opening sentences of the Lord’s Prayer:

(20) dompawi no nosumefi :: kafe um ::

katux tu tabo no su |
ufi baliwi no su an fia tu ::
alo no su an malo tu ::
doa um :: kafe um sika |
Dompawi no nosumengi, kange um,
father INAL 1.PL.INCL sky ADESS
katū tu tabo no su.
holy JUSS name INAL 2
Ungi baliwi no su an ngia tu,
king realm INAL 2 P come JUSS
alo no su an malo tu,
desire INAL 2 P make JUSS
doa um, kange um sika.
earth ADESS sky ADESS like
“Our Father in heaven,
may Your name be holy.
May Your kingdom come;
may Your will be done,
on earth, like in heaven.”

These two opening paragraphs contain exactly two finite verb phrases, parallel in form:
ufi baliwi no su an fia tu :: alo no su an malo tu Ungi baliwi no su an
ngia tu, alo no su an malo tu. The kingdom of Heaven here experiences its arrival, and
the will of God here experiences its being brought about, and as such these statements are
translated with finite verb phrases.

By contrast, in katux tu tabo no su katū tu tabo no su ‘may your name be holy,’ the
name is asked to be or become something. Despite the use of a verb-making jussive particle,
the name is not marked specifically as a patient; rather, it is being equated with the desired
condition of being holy. If a specific person or group of people were being urged to hallow
the name (i.e. katux tu tabo no su an nosumefi kel katū tu tabo no su an
nosumengi kel, ‘let us hallow Your name’) then the name would be marked as patient and
the introduced agent marked as well. The remaining statements of the prayer, similarly, are
a series of locative phrases that are equative in form and do not require patient marking.

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 Tengkolaku

Patient omission
In the following example, because a topic has been specified, the second sentence with a
finite verb phrase does not require an explicit patient:

(21) ufi na kafe yi nos| idu nogo nay ofau lax pado exs seda
gau |
Ungi na kange yi nos. Idu nogo nay ongau lā pado ēs seda
son POSS sky TOP 1. Morn even ADV chair LOC gold MAT sit
gau.
PRS.IPFV
“I am the Son of Heaven. In the morning and evening (I am) sitting on a golden
chair.”

The words yi an yi an (TOP P) or nos an nos an (1 P) could be added to the second

sentence, but they are omitted because they add nothing. A topic has been marked formally
for this discourse. Topic marking means that missing arguments are assumed to refer to the
established topic.

Monovalent finite verb phrases will in the vast majority of cases have patients only, not
agents. The exception to this rule is where ordinarily a finite verb phrase would be transitive
and have two arguments, but the ‘patient’ role is either irrelevant or trivial:

(22) feofo gan onsa kel |

Ngeongo gan onsa kel
kill GNO tiger A
“Tigers kill things.”

As is the case for many gnomic statements, this could potentially be recast as an equative
statement without a finite verb:

(23) feofo onsa nel |

Ngeongo onsa nel
kill tiger BEN
“Killing (is) for tigers.”

However, the finite verb sentence:

(24) lenu semili kel wamifi oni

Lenu semili kel wamingi oni
woman yonder A eat HORT
“That woman needs to eat (something).”

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 would be somewhat more difficult to recast as an equative statement.

Another instance where a Tengkolaku finite verb phrase might appear with only an agent
and no marked patient is similar to this one, where the agent is separate from the patient
but the verb phrase has a middle voice force:

(25) lisa kel uxgu gau |

Lisa kel ūgu gau
Lisa A sing PRS.IPFV
“Lisa is singing (a song).”

Here the Tengkolaku, unlike English, uses the same word for ‘singing’ and ‘song’, so the
form lisa kel uxgu gau uxgu an Lisa kel ūgu gau ūgu an is redundant. This also
contrasts with the equative sentence:

(26) uxgu lisa |

Ūgu Lisa
sing Lisa
“Lisa sings.”
Or: “Lisa is musical.”
Or: “Lisa is a singer.”

But when both roles are cast a finite verb phrase cannot be avoided:

(27) Mauf kel gipi an feofo gau |

Maung kel gipi an ngeongo gan
cat A mouse P kill GNO
“Cats kill mice.”

This slight wordiness means that in well styled Tengkolaku, equative clauses are preferred
over finite verb clauses whenever possible:

(28) gipi tolpun na mauf |

Gipi tolpun na maung
mouse hunt POSS cat
“Mice are the prey of cats.”

Agents, patients, and benefactives

When statements are made that use finite verb particles that add TAME, the finite verb
clause comes into its own and becomes the default means of expression. However, because
of topicalization, all the arguments need not be specified when they are clear from context:

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 Tengkolaku

(29) popem yi kel tolpun us. wafkubix lax dilopede us. tefli kafe
lax dika us |
Popem yi kel tolpun us. Wangkubī lā dilopede us. ‘Tengli kange
man TOP A hunt PF. Mountain LOC get.lost PF. deity sky
lā’ dika us
LOC say PF
“A man was hunting. (He) got lost on the mountain. ‘God in heaven!’ (he) said.”

The last two sentences contain no formally marked patients, even though their notional
content would appear to require an experiencer (‘get lost’) and contain reported speech. This
is because the topicalized participant carries forward when the topic was introduced in the
first sentence. Where a topic has been declared explicitly, ‘missing’ arguments are assumed
to be about it.

A consequence of the Tengkolaku finite verb system is that the English distinction between
the ‘passive voice’ and an ‘active voice’ is attenuated. The cultural values of the Iwi are
reflected in this also, in that personal pronouns are considered rude and avoided when
used to refer to people who are actually parties to a conversation. Likewise, irrelevant data
about actors who brought something about tends to be muted in ordinary conversational
Tengkolaku. Thus a statement like:

(30) nenebe an kondili us |

Nenebe an kondili us
house P build PF

could be rendered in English equally plausibly as ‘A house was built’ or ‘Someone built a
house.’ Benefactives can be added easily to such a statement:

(31) enlilna nel nenebe an kondili us |

Enlilna nel nenebe an kondili us
queen BEN house P build PF
“(A/The) house was built for (a/the) queen.”

Moreover, without saying so much, the sentence could be inferred to mean ‘I built a house.’
This interpretation could be strengthened by adding an vouching evidential particle:

(32) nenebe an kondili us sau |

Nenebe an kondili us sau
house P build PF EXP

literally, ‘I know for sure, because I witnessed, that a house was built.’ This is preferable in
etiquette to:

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(33) nenebe an kondili us iki kel |
Nenebe an kondili us iki kel
house P build PF here A
““Here-by-me” built the house.”
Or: “I built the house.”

In Tengkolaku, you don’t take credit and you don’t assign blame without being somewhat
offensive. The three way deixis of Tengkolaku (here-by-me, there-by-you, yonder) corre-
sponds to the first, second, and third persons and makes the avoidance of the pronouns
easier. Rude to the point of obscenity would be:

(34) nenebe an kondili us nos kel |

Nenebe an kondili us nos kel
house P build PF 1 A
“I built the house.”

The pronoun nos nos is encountered in ritual and narrative contexts almost exclusively,
where it is allowed because it is presumed that the person to whom it refers is a character
and not someone present who can hear what is being said.

Because Tengkolaku lexical words have no inherent part of speech, and the TAME cate-
gories can be added to any word, this allows them to be used as verbal predicates despite
their apparent notional force:

(35) toxlo an nenebe gan |

Tōlo an nenebe gan
tree P house GNO
“A tree is being used as a house.”

An agent can be added to such a sentence, which makes the colloquial English rendition
sound a bit less odd:

(36) toxlo an nenebe gan simi kel |

Tōlo an nenebe gan simi kel
tree P house GNO monkey A
“Monkeys use trees for houses.”
Or: “Monkeys live in trees.”

The same laconic preference means that any of the Tengkolaku verbal particles create a
finite verb phrase. Tense markers (distant future: nenebe an kondili waf, Nenebe
an kondili wang, ‘Some day a house will be built’), modal markers (jussive: nenebe an
kondili tu, Nenebe an kondili tu! ‘Let a house be built / Build a house’), aspect markers
(present imperfect: nenebe an kondili gau, Nenebe an kondili gau, ‘(they) are
building a house’), and even evidential markers (hearsay: nenebe an kondili ba,

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 Tengkolaku

Nenebe an kondili ba, ‘I hear a house (is getting) built’) – all of these markers create finite
verb phrases.

The particles are also stackable (nenebe an kondili waf ba, Nenebe an kondili
wang ba, ‘I hear that a house will be built some day’). Just as number is an optional category
for the Tengkolaku noun phrase, and a specified patient or agent is not a required argument
for the finite verb phrase, so also the TAME categories need not all be specified in a finite
verb phrase. The speaker may specify as many, or as few, of these properties as she feels
appropriate.

Conclusion
Tengkolaku gets much of its flexibility from its options to use either equative statements
or finite verb phrases. The finite verb phrase is obligately marked for at least one of the
categories of tense, aspect, mode, or evidentiality. Where such marking is felt by the speaker
to be unneeded, it is often possible to recast the statement in the equative form. But where
there are multiple participants in a statement regarding some action, a finite verb phrase is
necessary.

English sentences, with their obligate marking of noun categories like number, and manda-
tory inclusion of a finite head verb, will seem wordy and unidiomatic if all of these features
are sought to be reproduced directly in Tengkolaku. Good Tengkolaku style requires the
identification of those parts of a sentence that can be stripped out for being too obvious or
implied, and using only those markers that actually convey new information.

Page 62
 07 Verbs In Qo Yah Alimecar

by RainbowMusician

An overview

There are three types of verbs in qo yah alimecar. The type of each verb is determined by
its etymology in the proto-language. Sound changes have wreaked havoc upon the original
system of umlaut, and as the various systems failed, different backups were made, leading
to the varied ways tenses can be marked. In addition to these tense markers, there are no
pronouns. Subject and object are marked exclusively on the verb, and verbal morphemes
are often difficult to tell apart because they impact each other.

Verbal Structure
Verbs fall into the three types of i, a, and u, marked in the dictionary with diacritics
identical to the root vowels, ergo ᵃ is used to mark a-types, ᶦ for i-types and ᵘ for u-types.
The root letter is the final vowel in the word’s default form in the proto-language. There
was no regular vowel loss between the proto-language and the modern one so the theme
vowel can be guessed, but it is hard to tell for sure from the modern word. Each of the three
types of verbs mark tense in a different way, as i-types show tense through umlaut, a-types
use prefixes and u-types use suffixes. Excluding tense, the structure of a basic verb in QYA
is as shown below:

(1) Aspect Root Voice-Subject-Object

Sentence Structure
The structure of sentences is a very strict VSO. The particle i is used to fill the subject or
object slot if all the necessary subject/object information is marked on the verb, as in ‘they
are good.’

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 Qo Yah Alimecar

(2) puca akoqāqe i kuce

puca akr -aql -aqe i kuce
COP.PRS.IMP ACT -3.NOM -3.ACC DUM positive
“They are good.”

In a sentence such as ‘frogs are good,’ the dummy particle i is replaced with frogs, the
subject of the sentence.

(3) puca akoqāqe teceńal kuce

puca akr -aql -aqe teceńal kuce
COP.PRS.IMP ACT -3NOM -3ACC frog.PL positive
“Frogs are good.”

Note that due to complicated sound changes and the reduplicative method used in the
proto-language to mark plurality, the majority of plurals in qo yah alimecar are irregular.
While a singular frog is teńal, many frogs are teceńal. Some speakers have begun prefixing
the word for many, per, to words to indicate plurality, but any plurals used in this text will
be the standard ones.

Mutation
The superscript f, r, and l represent mutation. In almost every case, this mutation is
phonetic, not phonemic, and produces only a minor effect upon the following vowel. This
mutation can occur within words via affixation and between words. It shows the history of
the changes causing the loss of the traditional umlaut system and the growth of the new and
more diverse verbal construction.

It is clear that in the proto-language, there were three modifiers that could be attached to
consonants. It is unclear exactly what those modifiers were, or exactly which consonants
they could be attached to, but it is certain that they could be attached to stops. The modifiers
were eventually lost, affecting vowels and leading to the modern six-vowel system from the
archaic three vowels. In most cases, the vowels will simply be written using their modern
orthography, but historical word-final modifiers would impact vowels across word bound-
aries and therefore need a way to be written in the modern system. These are now written
with the aforementioned f, r, and l, representing front, rounding and length mutation.

The effects of these mutations are shown in the below table, with the rows representing
the vowel quality in the proto-language and the columns representing the modifier attached
to it.

+r +f +l
*a o e ā
*i ü i ī
*u u ü ū

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Example
(4) qo fetüh aūkurüpe, tai mecaü aliaq i ta leftuy uluqutē. ta peliń ikür i, ta ohlef-
tuy amecukü i.
[qo fetyx auːkuɻype tai meʈ͡ʂay aliaq i ta leftuj uluquteː | ta peliɳ ikyɻ i ta oxleftuj
ameʈ͡ʂuky i]
qo fetüh al - ukr - ur-üpe ta-i mecaü ali-aql i
HAB apologize PRS-ACT-1NOM-2.ACC IMP-FUT deteriorate PSV-3NOM DUM
ta leftuy uliuqutē
set.of .stairs
“Sorry sir, but the stairs have fallen through,”
ta peliń ikr -ir i, ta oh-leftuy al - mec- ukr -üf
IMP recommend.PRS ACT-1NOM DUM IMP NEG-ascend PRS-NOM-ACT-2NOM
i
DUM
“and I recommend you do not ascend.”

The differences in the verb types are shown quite well here. This excerpt features a, i,
and u-type verbs, so it is a good example to explain the mechanics of each. Below are the
four verbs in the above passage, with all optional morphemes removed, as well as all tense
information. The optional morphemes will be explained in detail later in this article.

English No. Type Aspect Root Voice Subject Object

I apologize to you 1 u-type qo fetüh ukʳ ur üpe
HAB ACT 1NOM 2ACC
It has deteriorated 2 a-type ta mecaü ali aqˡ
IMP PSV 3NOM
I recommend 3 i-type ta peliń ikʳ ir
IMP ACT 1NOM
That you do not ascend 4 u-type ta leftuy ukʳ üᶠ
IMP ACT 2NOM

Here, I’ll use T to represent the theme vowel. Many of the morphemes here are quite
similar or, in some cases, identical. The first particle, ta, marks verbs 2-4 as imperfective
in aspect. The qo in no. 1 marks it as habitual. After that is the voice marker, Tkʳ- or
Tli-. Tkʳ- marks it as active while Tli- marks passive. Following that in verbs 1 and 3 is the
first-person marker -Tr-, marking a first-person subject. Verb 2 has a third-person subject
and, therefore, is marked with -Vqˡ-. Verb 4 has a second-person subject so takes the affix
-Tᶠ- (except is u-types where ü is used instead of i in the second person), and then verb 1
finishes with an second-person object suffix, Tpe.

In the fourth verb, there’s another affix besides the required verbal morphology. This -
mec- infix makes a verb into a noun. It can be used as a vocabulary-building tool, but it is
often also used to simply nest a verbal clause into another, as seen in this example.

The u-types are in the present, marked with the prefix aˡ-, and the a-type is in the future,
resulting in the -i suffix after the initial aspect particle. The i-verb is marked via umlaut,
but as it is in the present, the vowel surfaces as an i. However, in other tenses the final
vowel is altered. This can lead to confusion in non-native speakers, as what may look like

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 Qo Yah Alimecar

a perfectly innocent a-type in the present tense might be a similar-sounding i-type verb in
the past tense.

Conclusion
qo yah alimecar is messy, complicated, and terrifyingly ambiguous, often to the detriment
of learners. Even looking only at the primary dialect, the one described in this article, the
verbs have many morphemes, only some of which are required. The vowel mutation, almost
omnipresent in the language, confuses endings further, and as related languages tend to have
much more conservative verb systems there are few non-native speakers who do not have
trouble with the verbs as they are learning them.

qo yah alimecar is a fascinating language to study and hypothesize about, and I look
forward to the next time I am called to document it.

Page 66
 08 Bjark'ümii Verbs

by Lichen

Volition, Magnitude, and Plural (Dis)Agreements

Like most languages, Bjark’ümii has verbs. They have no morphology for tense, aspect nor
mood, apart from a volitional~nonvolitional distinction. There is polypersonal agreement,
albeit limited to two arguments, so applicatives and noun-incorporation are prevalent. They
also exhibit a productive ‘magnitude paradigm’ to create augmented and diminished verbs
of related meanings.

Introduction
After experiencing the monstrous verbal paradigms of the likes of Latin, Arabic, and some
languages of North America, I wanted Bjark’ümii verbs to be minimal in their morphology,
trying to hold true to my motto for this language of “less is more.” They still ended up with a
reasonable amount of morphology, with each verb maximally having 15 forms (not including
the various combinations of subject and object agreement prefixes), with all notions of tense
and aspect dealt with lexically, through context, or from periphrasis. In this article, we will
be looking at:

1. verbs at a glance;
2. the volitional nonvolitional distinction;
3. the ‘magnitude paradigm’ of augmented, plain, and diminished verbs;
4. the relationships between transitive verbs, intransitive verbs, and adjectives;
5. some notes about the agreement prefixes;
6. noun incorporation;
7. applicatives; and
8. handling reflexivity and reciprocity.

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 Bjark'ümii

Verbs at a Glance
The template for verbs is as follows:

A/S-(P)-root-(aug/dim)-verbaliser-(applicative/converb)

The root contains the main semantic information, and exists in two grades: a long grade for
volitionals, and a short grade for nonvolitionals (more on that in the next section). Roots are
by default ‘plain’ within the magnitude paradigm, but can be augmented or diminished with
a suffix - though in the modern language, sound changes have made the surface realisation
these suffixes quite varied and different from their former forms as *-ʔ and *-h for the
augmentative and diminutive respectively.

The verbalizer suffix tells you whether the verb is transitive -aa; or an intransitive change
of state -ai~e; or an intransitive steady state -ii. The intransitive steady state verbs are what
Bjark’ümii uses as predicative adjectives, while attributive adjectives are nouns.

The agreement prefixes agree in noun class. Intransitives take only an S agreement prefix;
and transitives take A and P prefixes, which can sometimes be dropped (more on that below).

Lastly, a final suffix can be added for applicatives or converbs. In fact the applicatives de-
rive from old converbs themselves, which suggests why a verb cannot contain an applicative
and a converb.

Volitional~Nonvolitional
Effectively all verbs in Bjark’ümii have two forms: the volitional form (VOL), and the
nonvolitional form (NVL). The volitional form is used for actions that are intended or willed
by the A or S argument, while the NVL form is used for actions that are not intended or willed
by the A or S argument. These sorts of pairs normally appear in English with separate lexical
entries. Here are a few examples:

Volitional Nonvolitional
zaakaa Watch, look at skaa See, catch sight of
vaahaa Listen to uhaa Hear
kvaata Think kvtaa Feel
skwaime Fly (of a bird) skwimai Fly (of an object)
zraüńe Spit zrüńai Vomit
hvjauwe Cry (on purpose) hvjuwai Cry
tkjaase Go to sleep tkisai Fall asleep
fai’aa Let fall fi’aa Drop (on accident)

It is worth noting that the noun classes in Bjark’ümii are ranked in an animacy hierarchy,
such that nouns that do not belong to the human or animate classes can only be the subject
of a nonvolitional verb, and never that of a volitional verb.

The Magnitude Paradigm

Essentially all verbs can be augmented or diminished with the addition onto the root of
two historical suffixes *-ʔ and *-h respectively. This process of changing a verb’s ‘mag-
nitude’ will slightly change the meaning, and this meaning goes beyond what the labels
‘augmented’ and ‘diminished’ might imply. For augmented verbs, the implication is that

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the action is somehow culturally undesirable, excessive, magnified, or occurring all at once;
while diminished verbs imply a sense that the action is culturally desirable, done to a degree
that is ‘just right’, or occurring iteratively. I think these examples will prove elucidating:

Plain Augmented Diminished

baume run bombe flee bomme sprint
kihii one kikŕii alone kiŕŕi singular, exceptional
vukii hot vukkii too hot vuhii warm
maurŕaa bite morkŕaa chomp, crunch mohrŕaa nibble, peck
kaafaa drink kaapfaa guzzle kaffaa sip
vilkii hungry vilkkii starve vilhi peckish
tpaülaa tie up tpaüllaa truss up tpaühlaa decorate w/ string, ribbon
njusii dark njusawii pitch black njussii dim
t’nii red t’ntii flushed, inflamed t’nnii rosy-cheeked

As you can see, the surface realisations of the augmented and diminished forms vary de-
pending on the sounds in the verbal root, but are regular enough that the magnitude mor-
phology is still productive, even with loanwords. For example, the word ‘surf ’ with its
connotations of ‘surfing the web’ was loaned into Bjark’ümii and reanalyzed as having the
root sw-rf thus yielding the verb swaarfaa ‘to surf the internet’, with its augmented form as
swarpfaa meaning ‘to waste time, procrastinate on the internet’.

Occasionally the augmented or diminished form, if it conforms to the phonotactic con-

straints of verbal roots, will be reanalyzed as a plain form verb and be re-augmented or
re-diminished for further derivation. An example would be t’nii ‘red’ being augmented to
t’ntii ‘flushed’, and then rediminished to t’nsii ‘flustered’.

Transitives and Intransitives

Verbs can either be transitive, intransitive change of state, or intransitive steady state.
The intransitive steady state verbs function as predicative adjectives, and can only occur in
the nonvolitional short grade; while the intransitive change of state verbs and the transitive
verbs can appear as volitional or nonvolitional. The total 5-way form can be seen as follows,
using the root ŕ-m which has to do with being underwater.

TR.VOL TR.NVL INT.VOL INT.NVL ADJ

ŕaamaa ŕmaa ŕaame ŕmai ŕmii
Drop some-
Put in water, Underwater,
thing into Dive down Sink
drown submerged
water

Very few verbal roots will actually have all five forms available to them. One constraint on
this is that only patient-like intransitives will yield transitives in this paradigm; or, in other
words, whenever an intransitive is made into a transitive, the S argument must become the
P argument.

(1) Len kiŕmai

Len ki- ŕm -ai
Len H- in.water.NVL -NTR
“Len sank in the water.”

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 Bjark'ümii

(2) Biiter Lent kjaiŕaamaa

Biiter Len =t ki- je- ŕaam -aa
Peter Len =ACC H- H.OBV- put.in.water -TR
“Peter pushed Len under the water.”
(3) Len kiŕaame
Len ki- ŕaam -ai
Len H- in.water.VOL -NTR
“Len dove into the water.”
(4) *Biiter Lent kjaiŕaamaa
Biiter Len =t ki- je- ŕaam -aa
Peter Len =ACC H- H.OBV- put.in.water -TR
*“Peter made Len dive into the water.”
Biiter kibubaańaa ni Len jeŕaame
Biiter ki- bu- baańaa ni Len je- ŕaam -ai
Peter H- ABS- make.happen C Len H.OBV- in.water.VOL -NTR
“Peter made Len dive into the water.”

The difference between (1) and (2) is simply that the verb has been made transitive, with
Peter becoming the A argument with Len going from S to P. However, to transform (3) to
(4), making the verb transitive cannot give the impression that Len dove into the water
of his own volition, as the transitive verb confers a certain degree of ‘patientness’ to the P
argument. As such, a periphrastic construction is used, broadly meaning “Peter made it that
Len dive”.

Verbs of motion provide a counterpoint to this. Despite having highly agent-like S ar-
guments, verbs of motion have a transitive form, and when transitivized the S argument
will become the new A argument instead of P. Consider the intransitive transitive pair
maase~maasaa, which means ‘to walk’. The intransitive form maase takes a single agree-
ment prefix for its subject and a locative adjunct for the destination, while the transitive
form maasaa will take two agreement prefixes, one for the (now) A argument, and one for
the location which has been promoted to the P argument. If the location appears as an overt
noun phrase, it will have an accusative clitic attached to it to show it is the direct object.
Both verbs still mean ‘to walk’. When both have specified locations, maase implies that
the destination has not yet been reached, while maasaa does. Furthermore, if maase has
no locative adjunct, it takes an indeterminate reading like ‘to wander around.’ Because the
‘transitive’ form of verbs of motion implies completed endpoints, it is used extensively for
past tense or future tense actions.

Agreement Prefixes
Verbs, if intransitive, must take an agreement prefix matching the subject, while transitive
verbs take two prefixes: one for the A argument and one for the P argument. The prefixes
can be found in the table below.

I have included the glossing abbreviations in the table. Nouns in Bjark’ümii have an inher-
ent plurality, such that all humans, animate, and inanimates are either lexified as singular
or plural, and can be thereafter pluralized or singularized respectively. Locations and ab-
stractions are singular by default. Broadly speaking, plural entities are those that are either

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composed of many identical or similar parts, or things that behave in a unified way: council,
team, flock, rain, leaves, hair.

Proximate Obviate
Human singular ki <H> je <H.OBV>
Human dual t’l <H.DU>
Human plural ru <H.PL> m <H.PL.OBV>
Animate singular va <AN>
Animate plural zü <AN.PL>
Inanimate singular ta <INAN>
Inanimate plural lu <INAN.PL>
Locations so <LCN>
Abstractions bu <ABST>

Number Agreement and Disagreement

Normally a verbal prefix will agree with the plurality of the noun it refers to:

(5) Biiter santwitś kitaśaataa

Biiter santwitś ki- ta- śaataa
Peter sandwich H- INAN- eat
“Peter ate the sandwich.”
(6) Ra’tul rubura’taa
ra’tul ru- bu- ra’taa
council H.PL- ABST- decide
“The council made a decision.”

However, agreement is not so straightforward when the noun phrase is composed of more
than one noun. Agreement can either be with the plural prefix, which gives a reading that
the action is done all together; or with the singular prefix, with the reading that the action
is done distributively.1

(7) Biiter źaMari źaLen santwitś rutaśaataa

Biiter źa= Mari źa= Len santwitś ru- ta- śaataa
Peter CONJ= Mary CONJ= Len sandwich H.PL- INAN- eat
“Peter, Mary, and Len ate a sandwich (together).”
(8) Biiter źaMari źaLen santwitś kitaśaataa
Biiter źa= Mari źa= Len santwitś ki- ta- śaataa
Peter CONJ= Mary CONJ= Len sandwich H- INAN- eat
“Peter, Mary, and Len (each) ate a sandwich.”

Similarly, if the direct object is plural, using the plural agreement will suggest the objects
were acted upon all at once, while a singular agreement will suggest the objects were acted
on one at a time.
1
Note as well that if a noun phrase is composed of nouns of differing animacy, the verbal agreement
prefix(es) will agree with whatever noun is highest in the animacy hierarchy.

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 Bjark'ümii

(9) Biiter santwitśle kiruśaataa

Biiter santwitś -le ki- ru- śaataa
Peter sandwich -PL H- INAN.PL- eat
“Peter ate the sandwiches (all at once).”

(10) Biiter santwitśle kitaśaataa

Biiter santwitś -le ki- ta- śaataa
Peter sandwich -PL H- INAN- eat
“Peter ate the sandwiches (one at a time).”

Lastly, numerical (dis)agreement can be used to define the specificity of a statement,

whether it is a gnomic truth that applies to multiple individuals, or a single instance. Note
in these examples with inalienable possession constructions that any agreement structures
will agree with the possessor; in this case, the tree.

(11) Svani na nunaktub tat’nii

Svani na nu- naktub ta- t’nii
leaves of PROX- tree INAN- red
“The leaves of this (individual) tree are red.”

(12) Svani na nunaktub lut’nii

Svani na nu- naktub lu- t’nii
leaves of PROX- tree INAN.PL- red
“The leaves of this (species of) tree are red.”

Salience Tracking
You will notice that for humans, there is a proximate obviate distinction. Generally, the
person most salient to the discourse will be marked as proximate with all others obviate, and
this is exemplified when someone is telling a story (whether about themselves or another).
In more back-and-forth conversation, the marking will swap according to the needs of the
conversation. Usually, named people and first- or second-persons will be introduced into
a discourse with the proximate prefixes, and it is common that for a few sentences two
arguments will be marked as proximate and ‘jostle’ for position until one is marked as the
obviate. Likewise, when two strangers are introduced, they will usually refer to themselves
using the obviate form out of deference for the other person by not making themselves
the focus of the discourse, and indeed will refer to the other party in the obviate form as
well lest they come across as overbearing or interrogatory. However, once someone asks a
substantive question, that will settle the asker as the proximate, though it swaps back and
forth a lot. A whole article could be written about this, and is best illustrated with a series
of dialogues, but I hope this explanation suffices to get across the main idea.

On the subject of questions, when answering a polar question, one can answer by merely
saying the verbal prefixes without including the verb. Note that this means that each in-
stance of saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’ will differ depending on the classes of the nouns in question.

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(13) Zni kitaśaataaśtii?
z= ni ki- ta- śaataa -śtii
Q= CMP H- INAN- eat -eaten
“Have (you) eaten (it)?”

(14) Kita.
ki- ta
H- INAN
“Yes.”

For those who are curious, the verb agreement prefixes derive diachronically from oblig-
atory noun classifiers that followed nouns. Given that word order was strictly SOV, the
generic sentence would be S CL O CL V. Objects could then be dropped while their classifier
remained, allowing S CL CL V, and eventually these classifiers became affixed onto the verb.

Noun Incorporation
As mentioned earlier, in an earlier stage of the language nouns had to be followed by
classifiers. A generic sentence would be S CL O CL V. However, a classifier might be dropped
off the object, resulting in the object being reanalysed as a preverbal modifier, and eventually
merging phonologically in a straightforward process of noun incorporation.

Old Language Modern Language

ʔulauk ki q’aim ta laataa ulok em kitalaataa
Ulok ki q’aim ta laataa ulok em ki- ta- laataa
Man CL stone CL knap Man stone H- INAN- knap
‘The man is knapping the stone.’ ‘The man is knapping the stone.’
ʔulauk ki q’aim laataa ulok ki’eblaataa
Ulok ki q’aim laataa ulok ki- ‘em- laataa
Man CL stone knap Man H- stone- knap
‘The man is stone-knapping.’ ‘The man is stone-knapping.’

You will notice that the verb retains the -aa transitive ending even though its valency has
ostensibly decreased seeing as it now takes only one agreement prefix. You will also see the
nasal dissimilation that has occurred when *q’aim was absorbed into the verb wherein the
nasal /m/ underwent fortition into /b/ due to it preceding /l/. Only direct objects can be
incorporated in this way, so if an instrument were to be incorporated, it would need to be
applicativized first to promote it to direct object before it could be incorporated (more on
that in the Applicatives section below). According to the classification set out in Mithun’s
The Evolution of Noun Incorporation (1984), this type of noun incorporation falls into Type I
to create ‘bound activities’ and into Type 2 when applicatives are involved.

One other thing of note is that inanimates in Bjark’ümii can take a range of shape-specifying
prefixes. I will not write out the whole list here, but suffice to say that sometimes in the old
language not only would an object’s classifier be absent to create bound activities, some-
times the noun itself would be dropped, leaving only the shape specifier. Some shape speci-
fiers when prefixed onto verbs would happen to create surface forms that conformed to the
phonotactic constraints that govern verbal roots, and would be reanalysed as a new verbal
root. One example is the verb twaatwaa ‘to squeeze,’ which has the root tw-tw. Historically,

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 Bjark'ümii

the shape-specifier for flat things s- was prefixed onto the verb, innovating the root stw-tw
which now yields the verb stwaatwa ‘to squeeze flat.’2

Applicatives
In the old language, the word order was SOVX, where X represents oblique arguments
like indirect objects, locations, and instruments etc. Because of this, the classifiers of those
arguments never became affixes on the verb, thus limiting verbs to have two arguments
it agreed with. Noun phrases in modern Bjark’ümii take certain clitics to elucidate their
roles in a sentence: ergative, accusative, locative, or instrumental. Subjects of intransitives
take no role clitic. Note that nouns in their ‘expected role’ will take a null clitic. Humans
and animates take a null ergative; inanimates take a null accusative; locations take a null
locative; and abstractions take a null instrumental.

The use, then, of applicatives is to promote either locative-marked items (which includes
indirect objects) or instrumental-marked items to being accusative-marked direct objects.
As such, there are two applicatives. The first -kn promotes locatives~goals~recipients to
direct objects and is derived from the verbal root k-n ‘give;’ and the second -ur promotes
instrumentals to direct objects and derives from the verbal root w-r ‘use.’ The verb kaanaa
‘to give’ by default marks its recipient with the accusative clitic, and the theme with the
instrumental clitic.

(15) Biiter Marit kjaikaana emb

Biiter Mari =t ki- je- kaana em =b
Peter Mary =ACC H- H.OBV- give stone =INSTR
“Peter gave Mary a stone.”
lit. “Peter gifted Mary with a stone.”

Bjark’ümii is not by default secundative, however. It depends on the verb in question, and
effectively asks “if the action must take place with another animate participant besides the
agent, then that non-agent animate entity will be marked as the direct object.” Thus verbs
like ‘help’ and ‘trade’ and ‘chat’ all take accusative marking which in English would be more
oblique: trade with someone, chat to someone.

(16) Biiter Marit kjaikaana

Biiter Mari =t ki- je- kaana
Peter Mary =ACC H- H.OBV- give
“Peter gave Mary (something, a gift).”

Sentence (15) shows that the oblique argument can simply be dropped with no morpho-
logical or syntactic consequence to the rest of the sentence. But suppose someone had asked
us ‘What did Peter give?’ and we wanted to say ‘Peter gave a stone (to Mary).’
2
Sometimes this crops up as stwaastwaa due to the semi-onomatopoeic nature of this verb. When native
speakers are asked about the difference between stwaatwaa and stwaastwaa they comment that the latter is
somehow ‘more flat.’

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(17) Biiter em kitakaanor (Maris)
Biiter em ki- ta- kaanaa -ur (Mari =s)
Peter stone H- INAN- give -APPL.1 (Mary =LOC)
“Peter gave a stone (to Mary).”

When the stone is promoted using the instrumental-to-accusative (APPL1) applicative suffix
-ur, it causes Mary to be demoted and acquire the locative clitic, and causes the agreement
of the verb to change from agreeing with Mary with H.OBV to agreeing with the stone with
INAN.

Now, let us consider the situation where we wish to promote a locative argument to an
accusative one. The verb kaavaa ‘write’ comes from a verb meaning ‘to notch into wood.’ It
does not necessarily require a second animate participant, and as such will take a locative
argument for the goal or beneficiary of the writing, as in the following:

(18) Biiter kitakaavaa Maris

Biiter ki- ta- kaavaa Mari =s
Peter H- INAN- write Mary =LOC
“Peter is writing (something) to Mary.”

Suppose, then, that we wanted to answer the question ‘Whom did he write to?’ This
supposes dropping the argument of whatever is written, and promoting Mary in its stead,
which we shall accomplish using the locative-to-accusative applicative (APPL2) -kn.

(19) Biiter Marit jekikaavakn

Biiter Mari =t je- ki- kaavaa -kn
Peter Mary =ACC H.OBV- H- write -APPL.2
“Peter wrote to Mary.”

Reflexivity and Reciprocity

In many languages readers will be familiar with, reflexivity is accomplished through the
addition of a self-referential pronoun (such as in the French, je me lave ‘I wash myself ’)
or perhaps a suffix on the verb (such as Russian одеваться ‘to get dressed’). In Bjark’ümii,
reflexivity is encoded with a particular verb sükzai meaning ‘to do to itself ’ that takes an
adjunct in the form of a nominalized verb to provide the main semantic information.

(20) Biiter kisükzai tpülu

Biiter ki- sükzai tpül -u =Ø
Peter H- REFL.NVL tie.NVL -NMLZ =INSTR
“Peter tied himself up (i.e. got tangled up).”
(21) Ra’tul rusükzai sku
ra’tul ru- sükzai sk -u =Ø
council H.PL- REFL.NVL see.NVL -NMLZ =INSTR
“The council saw itself.”

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 Bjark'ümii

Reciprocity is achieved by combining the reflexive verb with a plurality prefix disagree-
ment. In the first sentence there is normal agreement, with a reflexive sense; and in the
second sentence there is plurality disagreement, with a reciprocal sense.

(22) Biiter źaMari t’lsükzai sku

Biiter źa- Mari t’l- sükzai sk -u =Ø
Peter CONJ- Mari H.DU- REFL.NVL see.NVL -NMLZ =INSTR
“Peter and Mary saw themselves.”

(23) Biiter źaMari kisükzai sku

Biiter źa- Mari ki- sükzai sk -u =Ø
Peter CONJ- Mari H- REFL.NVL see.NVL -NMLZ =INSTR
“Peter and Mary saw each other.”

Conclusion
I went into creating this language with a few constraints I wanted to stick to, and the
results you see above are simply consequences of it. One constraint was that I wanted
verbs to polypersonally agree with a maximum of two arguments, which I then evolved
through guided evolution, and the applicatives and noun incorporation were a side effect of
that. Another of my constraints had been having default singular and default plural nouns,
and with a little antithetical thinking along the lines of “What if the numerical agreements
disagreed?” the plurationality patterns arose outlined above. All in all, I think the system is
coherent, and most importantly, pleasing.

Page 76
 09 Roots in gan Minhó

by mareck

And their morphology

The category of roots is the backbone of gan Minhó, being the only open class1 of lexemes
in the language. Thus, they take a variety of inflectional morphology that corresponds to
both nominal and verbal usages in other languages with such a distinction.

Introduction
Initially (and canonically), roots in gan Minhó were intended to explore omninominativ-
ity, a proposed counterpart to omnipredicativity in which roots are underlyingly predicates
(or, more simply, verbs). Omninominativity instead designates roots as underlyingly being
nominal, or nouns. I think there is some analysis of Tagalog having primarily nominal roots,
from which verbs are derived via voice affixes, but the terminology isn’t standard and I don’t
know if that was just a crackpot theory or a legitimate concept. Either way, I latched onto
the idea and decided to explore the idea.

Despite this, it is probably better to analyze gan Minhó roots as being precategorial,
wherein roots have neither nominal nor verbal properties until words with such charac-
teristics are derived from them (although there is some reasoning for the omninominative
interpretation). It is a moot point in my opinion, and I don’t let deep, arbitrary analyses get
in the way of my enjoyment.

In this article I will explore the morphology and related phenomena regarding roots in gan
Minhó. First, I will define what roots are and how they are used. Then, I will describe the
various morphological processes that roots may undergo. I will not be discussing in detail
secondary phenomena, those being applicatives and evidentiality proper.

In glosses, the first line will be in the romanization rather than the native script; this roman-
ization is phonetic, and reflects such processes as obstruent voicing, sonorant denasalization,
and high vowel sonority alternations.
1
An open class being a class of words that readily accepts new members.

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 gan Minhó

The root
As prefaced, the root is the sole open class of words in gan Minhó. As such, they take
the role of both verb and noun, predicate and argument (I treat these, respectively, as being
equivalent in gan Minhó). The distinction is primarily syntactic, and is related to informa-
tion structure (as syntax and information structure interact intimately in the language)2 .

By default, a given, bare root takes the reading of a mass noun, referring to an indistinct
amount of something or to a class of things. Generally, more “nouny” roots will simply
be given nominal readings, while more “verby” roots will have readings akin to an entity
characterized by a state (‘that which is…’). For example:

• gót, ktv-, -kkódv3 /kót, ktu, kkótu/ [ɡót ̪, kt ̪β̩, kkód̪β̩] ‘food, flatbread’
• bathà, ptz̀ha /pathà, ptɯ̀ ha/ [bɑ̃t ̪hɑ̰̀̃, pt ̪z̺ɣ
̰̀̍ ɑ̃] ‘mallard duck’
• aná /aná/ [ʔɑ̃n̺ɑ́̃] ‘(that which is) tall’

Roots and their stems will be explained later.

From this, they are freely derived into predicative (verbal) and argumentative (nominal)
uses. Predicative uses are derived via mode affixes, while argumentative ones are derived
using determiners. In both instances, roots also take morphology for the categories of state
and number, each of which has varying interpretations depending on the resultant predica-
tive or argumentative derivation of the root.

The inflectional morphology of roots may thus be described as being macrofunctional, a

concept that I enjoy exploring in my conlangs. I define it as the unification of more specific
categories into larger, more overarching ones; wherein many seemingly disparate usages of
a morpheme may be described as a single underlying function.

State and number are generally expressed via stem changes, affixation, or a combination
thereof.

The stems
Roots come in two classes, which are then subdivided into subclasses and/or stem classes,
which are determined by the phonological shape of the final foot of the root. A foot in gan
Minhó is defined as a bimoraic unit, such as CVCV, CVV, CVC, and so on.

Mutable roots take at least two stems, which are formed via root-internal changes. Im-
mutable roots have a single stem. Both classes have two subclasses.

Mutable roots come in strong and weak subclasses, although there are additionally three
types of strong roots: strong I, strong II, and strong III roots.

Strong roots take two stems: the alpha (α) and beta (β) stems. Strong I alpha stems end in
a -VCV pattern, and regularly take systemic vowel alternations to derive the beta stem from
the alpha stem. There is often some sort of tone movement (if tone is present in the root),
and there may also be other irregularities or even suppletion at play.

Regular vowel alternations of strong I roots are as follows:

2
The details of this relationship is beyond the scope of this article, but in short the predicate of a clause is
focal, and the primary argument (“subject”) of a clause is topical.
3
This root takes an additional third stem, which is not relevant to this article.

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 → i ɯ u e a o
i e-i i-a i-o i-i i-ɯ i-u
ɯ ɯ-e a-ɯ ɯ-o ɯ-i ɯ-ɯ ɯ-u
u u-e u-a o-u u-i u-ɯ u-u
e i-i e-a e-o i-e i-a e-u
a a-e ɯ-ɯ a-o a-i ɯ-a a-u
o o-e o-a u-u o-i u-a u-o

Wherein the left column is the first vowel and the top row is the second vowel of the final
-VCV shape.

• ugi /uki/ [ʔuɡɪ] → uge /uke/ [ʔuɡɛ] ‘drink’ (regular vowel alternation)
• nówi /nómi/ [n̺óβɪ] → nowé /nomé/ [n̺oβɛ́] ‘lumber’ (regular vowel alternation, tone
movement)
• mewi /memi/ [mɛβɪ] → mawi /mami/ [mɑ̃βɪ] ‘animal food’ (irregular vowel alterna-
tion; expected /e-i/ → /i-i/)
• gowo /komo/ [ɡoβo] → gàn /kàn/ [ɡɑ̰̀̃ŋ] ‘ear of corn’ (completely irregular)
• míri /míni/ [mɪ ́ɾ̺ɪ] → svgì /sukì/ [z̺β̩ɡɪ]̰̀ ‘bobcat’ (suppletion)

Strong II roots end in a -C₁C₂VCV pattern, and strong III roots in a -C₁C₂V(C) pattern. They
insert a vowel between the C₁ and C₂ to derive the beta stem from the alpha stem. There is
often some sort of truncation of some segments.

Regular vowel alternations of strong II/III roots are as follows:

base vowel i ɯ u e a o
alternate vowel e a o i ɯ u

Wherein the top row of base vowels alternate with the corresponding vowel in the bottom
row of alternate vowels.

• (II) thìma /thìma/ [t ̪hɪmɑ̃

̰̀ ] → dèhma /tèhma/ [d̪ɛɣ ̀ mɑ̃] ‘foreign food’ (regular vowel
insertion, segment truncation, tone movement)
• (III) áppa /áppa/ [ʔɑ̃́ppɑ̃] → bźba /pɯ́ pa/ [bź̺b
̩ ɑ̃] ‘attitude, manners’ (regular vowel
insertion, segment truncation, tone movement)
• (III) mánsa /mánsa/ [mɑ̃́ŋz̺ɑ̃] → móna /móna/ [món̺ɑ̃] ‘point’ (completely irregular)

Weak roots, like strong roots, also take two stems: the complete (σ) and incomplete (ς)
stems; unlike strong roots, weak roots have no subtypes. They end in a -CVC pattern, and
regularly truncate and/or metathesize the final consonant of the complete stem to form the
incomplete stem. More specifically, the final -C₁VC₂ shape is metathesized to -C₁C₂V, and
the vowel often undergoes alternation similar to strong II and III roots. Suppletion and
truncation of segments also occur.

• mìt /mìt/ [mɪt̰̀ ̪] → mdè- /mtè/ [md̪ɛ]̰̀ ‘hand(s), finger(s)’ (regular metathesis and vowel
alternation)

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 gan Minhó

• ibok /ipok/ [ʔɪbok] → ipko /ipko/ [ʔɪpko] ‘be slow’ (regular metathesis, no vowel
alternation)
• gòn /kòn/ [ɡò̰ŋ] → gnà- /knà/ [ɡn̺ɑ̰̀̃] ‘be fried’ (regular metathesis, irregular vowel
alternation; expected /o/ → /u/)
• nmás /nmás/ [ŋmɑ̃́s]̺ → nmsź- /nusɯ́ / [nm̩ z̺ź]̺̩ ‘bear jerky’ (regular metathesis and
vowel alternation, irregular transformation of /*nms/ to /nus/)
• usyt /usɯt/ [ʔuz̺ɯt ̪] → asto- /asto/ [ʔɑ̃st̺ ̪o] ‘be full’ (suppletion and/or irregular vowel
insertion)

Immutable roots come in open and closed subclasses. Compared to mutable roots, these
are fairly straightforward: open roots end in a vowel /i ɯ u e a o/, while closed roots end
in a consonant /p t s k h m n/. Each subclass only has a single stem.

• (open) horo /hono/ [ɣoɾ̺o] ‘rotten, moldy, bad (of food)’

• (closed) sunbes /sunpes/ [z̺uŋbɛs̺] ‘field’

Determiners
Determiners are used to instantiate and describe roots semantically and syntactically.

MIN
AUG
DIS PROX 2ND 1ST
ABS F te sa
tɯ nos kos
M tas sɯ
E kan si ne hon
DIR F hɯ
hos ti no ko
M mi
E men tan ni ha

The primary use of determiners is to derive count roots from (default) mass roots, although
they may also be used pronominally (to replace or refer to an argument-like root).

State and number on determiners are (mostly) identical to those of roots; however, deter-
miners also take their own additional categories: class and person.

Class is a semantic division of three groups: feminine, masculine, and edible; these are
mostly lexically-determined, in which a given root is assigned one class.

Person describes proximity and identity, and there are four grades: first, second, proximal,
and distal. The first and second persons describe speech act participants, while the proximal
and distal ones describe third-person referents.

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State and number
State and number are mandatory categories for which roots must inflect. State describes
the role and/or function of a root, and is a macrofunctional unification of (verb) voice
and (noun) case. Number describes an amount regarding a root, and is a macrofunctional
unification of (verb) valency/transitivity and (noun) number.

State and number are expressed fusionally via root/stem alternations as well as affixation.

MIN AUG MIN AUG

ABS α ABS σ
α/β-⟨ː⟩ σ-ːe
DIR α-n DIR ς-na
CON β CON ς„μ₁
Table 1: Strong Table 2: Weak

MIN AUG MIN AUG

ABS -t(e) ABS -i
∅ ∅
DIR -n DIR -a
CON -s CON -ɯ
Table 3: Open Table 4: Closed

Wherein strong I and II roots take the α-stem in the non-construct augmented inflection
(|α/β-⟨ː⟩|), and strong III roots take the β-stem. This inflection surfaces as gemination (or
infixed lengthening) of the medial consonant in the final foot of the stem (VCV → VCːV).

Additionally, the non-construct augmented inflection on open roots surfaces as |-t| after
single vowels, and as |-te| after vowel sequences.

In the inflection |ς„μ₁|, the weak root takes the incomplete stem suffixed with a redupli-
cated mora μ₁, which is reduplicated from the first mora complex (V or CV sequence) of the
final foot of the σ-stem. Additionally, tone (if present on the μ₁ of the σ-stem) moves with
the reduplicated mora. For instance, the weak root gót, ktv́- takes the construct state ktvgó
(and not *ktv́go, ktv́dv, etc.).

Also notable is that, in the mutable classes (strong and weak), the augmented number
merges the absolute and direct states; conversely, in the immutable classes (open and closed),
the absolute and direct states are merged in the minimal number.

State
State modulates the patientivity/agentivity and alignment of a root.

Absolute

The absolute state is associated with patientivity.

On predicates, it indicates that the subject is the patient and the object is the agent. It
triggers ergative alignment, aligning the subject as the topical argument.

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 gan Minhó

(1) gótka gan gére (2) góttek gan géne hos gmèsan
kótka kan kéne kóttek kan kéne hos kmèsan
be eaten:ABS DET fish eat:ABS DET fish DET bear
“as for the fish, it was eaten” “as for the fish, the bear ate it”

On arguments, it marks the S and O of ergative clauses, and the O of accusative clauses.

(3) gótka gan gére (4) góttek gan géne hos gmèsan
kótka kan kéne kóttek kan kéne hos kmèsan
be eaten DET fish:ABS eat DET fish:ABS DET bear
“the fish was eaten” “the fish was eaten by the bear”

(5) góttek hz gmèsan gan gére

kóttek hɯ kmèsan kan kéne
eat DET bear DET fish:ABS
“the bear ate the fish”

It is used to mark the composition or origin of another root, as well as when a numeral or
ideophone modifies another root.

(6) sz sunbesz das gowo (7) sa nmós nen

sɯ sunpesɯ tas komo sa nmós nen
DET field DET maize:ABS DET person two:ABS
“the two people”
“the field of maize”
“the pair of people”

Direct

The direct state is associated with agentivity.

On predicates, it indicates that the subject is the agent and the object is the patient, or
that the agent and patient are similar or the same (having a reflexive/reciprocal meaning).
It triggers accusative alignment, aligning the subject as the topical agent.

(8) ktúnga hz gmèsan

ktú-ka -n hɯ kmèsan
eat -DIR DET bear
“as for the bear, it ate (itself)”

On transitive predicates, it may also have a simple causative meaning (much like the
transitive absolute, except designating the agent as the topic). It may also indicate accom-
paniment, akin to ‘join in doing…’, or comparison, ‘be as…as’.

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(9) góttek hz gmèsan gan gére
kót-k -te hɯ kmèsan kan kéne
eat -DIR DET bear DET fish
“as for the bear, it ate the fish”
“the bear and the fish ate each other”
“the bear joined the fish in being eaten”
“the bear is as eaten as the fish”

On arguments, it marks the S and A of accusative clauses, and the A of ergative clauses.

(10) ktúnga hz gmèsan (11) góttek hz gmèsan gan gére

ktúnka hɯ kmèsa -n kóttek hɯ kmèsa -n kan kéne
eat DET bear -DIR eat DET bear -DIR DET fish
“the bear ate” “the bear ate the fish”

(12) góttek gan gére hos gmèsan

kóttek kan kéne hos kmèsa -n
eat DET fish DET bear -DIR
“the fish was eaten by the bear”

It is also used to mark the possessor or descriptor of another root.

(13) gan gíre hz gmèsan (14) sa gìmes síman

kan kíne hɯ kmèsa -n sa kìmes síma -n
DET fish DET bear -DIR DET bear brown -DIR
“the bear’s fish” “the brown bear”

Construct

The construct state is associated with modification.

On predicates, it indicates that the predicate is dependent. Its alignment is inherited from
its superordinate referent, but defaults to ergative if none is present (when insubordinated).

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 gan Minhó

(15) ktugók gan gére hos gmèsan (16) gan gére ktugók gan hos gmèsan
ktu-k „kó kan kéne hos kan kéne ktu-k „ kó kan hos
eat „CON DET fish DET DET fish eat „ CON DET DET
kmèsan kmèsan
bear bear
“that the fish was eaten by the bear” “the fish that was eaten by the bear”

(17) gan gére ktugók hos gmèsan

kan kéne ktu-k „ kó hos kmèsan
DET fish eat „ CON DET bear
“the fish, which was eaten by the bear”

On arguments, it is used when a root is directly modified by another root, such as in

denoting possession, description, composition, and origin.

(18) gan gíre hz gmèsan (19) sa gìwes síman

kan kíne hɯ kmèsan sa kìmes síman
DET fish:CON DET bear DET bear:CON brown
“the bear’s fish” “the brown bear”

(20) sz sunbesz das gowo (21) sa nmós de @tseri

sɯ sunpes -ɯ tas komo sa nmós te @tseni
DET field -CON DET maize DET person:CON DET Tseri
“the field of maize” “the person from Tseri”

The construct state is special in that it may “overwrite” the absolute and direct states. Thus,
the choice of determiner for a construct-state root is determined by the root’s expected role;
that is, if the root would have been marked as absolute, it still takes an absolute determiner,
and similarly with a direct determiner.

(22) góttek hz gìwes síman gan gére

kóttek hɯ kìmes síman kan kéne
eat DET bear:CON brown DET fish:ABS
“the brown bear ate the fish”

Number
Number describes an amount regarding the root.

Minimal

The minimal number describes the minimal expected amount or minimal contextually-
relevant amount of an argument.

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(23) a gmèsa (24) sa nàre
sa kmèsa sa nàne
DET bear:MIN DET eye:MIN
“two eyes”
“a bear”
“a pair of eyes”

Generally, when modified by a numeral or quantifier, the minimal number is used.

(25) sa gmèsa nen

sa kmèsa nen
DET bear:MIN two
“two bears”

It indicates that a predicate is intransitive, or that it takes a single core argument, S.

(26) genga sa gmèsa

kenka sa kmèsa
be hit:MIN DET bear
“the bear was hit”

Augmented

The augmented number describes a greater-than-expected amount of an argument.

(27) gos gmèssa (28) gos nànne

kos kmèsa -⟨ː⟩ kos nàne -⟨ː⟩
DET bear -AUG DET eye -AUG
“bears” “eyes”

It indicates that a predicate is transitive, or that it takes two core arguments, A and O.

(29) gerik sa gmèsa hos náman

ken-k -i sa kmèsa hos náman
hit -AUG DET bear DET person
“the bear was hit by the person”

Mode affixes
Mode affixes indicate aspect and form. They are primarily used to derive predicates from
roots.

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 gan Minhó

PRF IMP INS

PER -k(a) -ti -hi
NPR -m(o) -s(e) -pɯ
HON -ni -t(a) -h(o)
Table 5: Mode affixes

Wherein the noted mode suffixes surface as |-k, -m, -s, -t, -h| after a vowel, and as |-ka,
-mo, -se, -ta, -ho| after a consonant.

Form
Form is a vague mixture of mood/evidentiality and agreement centered around a primary
referent.

The primary referent is usually the speaker, but switches to the listener in imperative and
interrogative clauses.

Personal

The personal form is associated with realis events and a high degree of relevancy to the
primary referent. Realis events may be quantified as occurring in all possible worlds (@n).

A high degree of relevancy is associated with direct experience. This includes directly
witnessing an event as well as strong sensory evidence (visual/auditory). It is also used
extensively in elicited speech (as a “default” form), which is why most example sentences
are given in the personal form.

(30) no góttek gan gére (31) góttek gan gére hos gmèsan
no kótte -k kan kéne kótte -k kan kéne hos kmèsan
DET eat -PER DET fish eat -PER DET fish DET bear
“I ate the fish” “the bear ate the fish”

(32) ktugók gan gére hos kmèsan

ktukó -k kan kéne hos kmèsan
eat -PER DET fish DET bear
“the bear ate the fish”
Context: I witnessed it directly

It is important to note that the personal form is never used when describing the psycholog-
ical states of other people (e.g., mental/emotional states, but also states of perception such
as temperature); the impersonal or honorific must be used. Compare the following:

(33) sa sénnik gasak

sa sénni -k kasak
DET cover -PER joy
“they feel joyful”

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(34) sa sénnim gasak
sa sénni -m kasak
DET cover -NPR joy
“they feel joyful”

(35) sa sénniri gasak

sa sénni -ni kasak
DET cover -HON joy
“they (my superior) feel joyful”
Context: speaking of a matriarch

Impersonal

The impersonal form is associated with irrealis events and a low degree of relevancy to
the primary referent. Irrealis events may be quantified as occurring in at least one possible
world (Dn).

A low degree of relevancy is associated with indirect experience. This includes all kinds
of inference, reasonable assumption, and weak sensory evidence (taste, smell, and touch).

(36) di góttem gan gére (37) góttem hz gmèsan gan gére

ti kótte -m kan kéne kótte -m hɯ kmèsan kan kéne
DET eat -NPR DET fish eat -NPR DET bear DET fish

“you ate the fish” “the bear might/may have eaten the
fish”

(38) ktugóm hz gmèsan gan gére

ktukó -m hɯ kmèsan kan kéne
eat -NPR DET bear DET fish
“the bear ate the fish”
Context: I inferred from fish scraps

It may also be used to indicate a low degree of agency from the primary referent, or a lack
of volition/control over the event.

(39) no góttem gan gére

no kótte -m kan kéne
DET eat -NPR DET fish
“I accidentally ate the fish”

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 gan Minhó

Honorific

The honorific form is similar to the impersonal form in that it divorces the speaker from
event relevancy. It is used primarily in conversations in which one participant wishes to
issue respect toward the other, or in clauses that involve someone toward which the speaker
wishes to issue respect.

(40) no gótteri gan gére (41) sa gótteri gan gére

no kótte -ni kan kéne sa kótte -ni kan kéne
DET eat -HON DET fish DET eat -HON DET fish

“I ate the fish” “they ate the fish”

Context: spoken about a person of re-
Context: spoken to a person of respect
spect

Because of its rather limited “canonical” use, it has been repurposed outside of formal and
artistic speech. It is used for gnomic or generic statements, declarations of fact and a priori
knowledge.

(42) gótteni hz gmèsan gan gére

kótte -ni hɯ kmèsan kan kéne
eat -HON DET bear DET fish
“the bear ate the fish”
“bears eat fish”

It is also used as an indicator of evidentiality, for reported or hearsay information, or

information acquired second-hand.

(43) ktugóri hz gmèsan gan gére

ktukó -ni hɯ kmèsan kan kéne
eat -HON DET bear DET fish
“the bear ate the fish, so I heard”

Both these functions combine into another usage, in which the construction is used nar-
ratively. It divorces the speaker from the event, emphasizing the non-participancy of the
speaker. For this reason, it is often used when speaking of historical/mythical events and
fictitious stories.

Aspect
Aspect describes the flow and structure of time regarding an event.

Perfective

The perfective aspect describes events that are completely bound; they are viewed in their
entirety, or as being (temporally) complete, without regard to their internal structure.

With telic events, or events that tend toward a goal, the perfective generally entails cul-
mination.

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 It may also be used to bring attention to the result of a completed event, to express that
the event has occurred before (and that it is repeatable), and/or to indicate that the event
was recently completed (focusing the end of the event).

In narratives, is often used to establish the setting and/or background.

(44) góttek gan gére hos gmèsan

kótte -k kan kéne hos kmèsan

eat -PRF DET fish DET bear

“the bear ate up the fish”

“the bear has (just) eaten the fish”

Imperfective

The imperfective aspect describes events that are unbound; they are viewed as having
internal structure, or as being incomplete/ongoing. It may also indicate that the timeframe
of the event extends past its expected duration.

It is broadly associated with incomplete events or events that continue beyond an expected
point/duration (events that started in the past and continue into or continue to have rele-
vance in the present), and is the aspect most commonly associated with future-like meanings.
Without a future modal (of which there are two), any meanings relating to the future are
usually near-future. This generally ranges from very soon/imminent to a few days, but may
extend further depending on context.

It is often used to describe ongoing events within a narrative, or to express the “body” of
a narrative.

(45) góttedi gan gére hos gmèsan

kótte -ti kan kéne hos kmèsan

eat -PRF DET fish DET bear

“the bear eats the fish”

“the bear is eating the fish”
“the bear is still/kept on eating the fish”
“the bear is going to eat the fish”

Instantive

The instantive aspect describes point-like events, changes of state, and event instances. It
is used to bring attention to the anticipation of an event, and/or to focus the beginning of
an event.

It is broadly associated with events that actually ongoing at or around the time of speaking.
It is used to drive a narrative forward, emphasizing important moments and points of change.

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 gan Minhó

(46) góttehi gan gére hos gmèsan

kótte -hi kan kéne hos kmèsan
eat -INS DET fish DET bear
“the bear is eating the fish, right now”
“the bear bit/bites (into) the fish”
“the bear started/starts to eat the fish”
“the bear is/was about to eat the fish”

With telic events, it may be used for perfective-like events without the entailment of cul-
mination, but still entailing termination.

(47) góttehi gan gére hos gmèsan dis mit gótka

kótte -hi kan kéne hos kmèsan tis mit kótka
eat -INS DET fish DET bear but not be eaten
“the fish was eaten by the bear, but it (the fish) was not eaten”
“the bear started to eat the fish, but did not complete the task”

Conclusion
The root is the powerhouse of gan Minhó. This article is basically a wholesale copy of the
respective sections of the grammar document proper of gan Minhó, which I am hesitant to
release publicly (not in small part due to its perpetually-unfinished state), although some
parts were removed or edited to varying degrees due to irrelevance. This article serves as a
brief overview of the root morphology of gan Minhó, with additional background and meta
information.

Thank you for reading!

Page 90
 Encoding modernity in a
10 lexicon's organisation

by Aidan Aannestad

Motion and location verb classes in Mirja

Mirja is a personal language I’ve been working on for a number of years now. It has several
artistic goals, but one of these is that it’s meant to be a language fully immersed in the
modern world—in effect, its lexicon should be a direct reflection of my own personal daily
life and worldview. All natlangs in the modern era still carry with them a significant amount
of historical baggage from their pre-modern use—baggage which is perfectly understandable
and reasonable, but something I wanted to try getting rid of. As a result, Mirja’s vocabulary
takes as basic some things which we as natlang speakers are used to accessing through
metaphors, such as the semantic space of interacting with digital information; and on the
flipside, Mirja can struggle with things that most natlangs have little issue with, such as
riding animals.

This modern perspective is much more pervasive in Mirja than it might be even in other
languages with a similar modern perspective, though. Mirja’s lexicon has a typological pro-
file such that in any situation involving motion, location, or possession, the speaker has to
include information about the objects involved in the situation. In Leonard Talmy’s terms,1
Mirja’s verbs of motion, location, and possession (henceforth ‘MLP’) are figure-conflation
verbs, where the verb lexically contains information about the object being moved or lo-
cated, rather than the manner of the motion or location (as English does) or the path the
motion is along (as Spanish does). As a result, an English verb like have has a huge number
of potential Mirja translations, but those translations tell you quite a lot about what it is that
is being had.

Overview of the system

I use the term ‘MLP verbs’ in this paper since motion, location, and possession verbs all
group together in a number of ways in Mirja; and most importantly, verbs whose primary
use is one of those types of meaning automatically have some derivational means of getting
at the other two types. For example, kata ‘for a train to move’ has a derived form katassa
1
See e.g. Talmy’s article in Language Typology and Syntactic Description, vol. 3, ed. Timothy Shopen, 2007.

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 Mirja

‘for a train to be located’, and ryky ‘for a book to be located’ has a derived form rykymava
‘for a book to move’. Location and possession are more closely connected, in that possession
is handled by simply using a location verb with an altered argument structure.2

(1) Lijeere Rhakamappa rykykée

lijere -** rhakama -ppa ryky -ku -e
ring -COL ruler -POSS book.is.located -there.visible -INV
“There’s (a physical copy of) The Lord of the Rings there.”

(2) norho Lijeere Rhakamappa ryky

no -rV -* lijere -** rhakama -ppa ryky
1SG -OBL -TOP ring -COL ruler -POSS book.is.located
“I have (a physical copy of) The Lord of the Rings.”

Excluding possession, there are three basic meanings which all MLP verbs have access
to: being located, moving, and causing to move, as well as some additional derivations
for specific subclasses of verbs. Different types of verbs typically take one of those three
meanings as their most basic, and get at the other two via various types of derivation. For
example, ryky ‘for a book to be located’ is a low-mobility object verb, and takes ‘is located’ as
its base form; ‘cause a book to move’ is the derived form rykyma, and ‘for a book to move’
is the further derived rykymava. In contrast, a high-mobility object verb like ussa ‘for a
leaf to move’ takes the ‘move’ meaning as basic, and has derived forms ussattha ‘for a leaf
to be there’ and ussala ‘cause a leaf to move’. Some classes of verbs have somewhat different
derivational morphology from other classes that take the same basic meaning—for example,
a vehicle verb such as kata ‘for a train to move’ becomes katami ‘cause a train to move’ (i.e.
‘drive a train’) rather than ?katala.3

MLP verbs together form something of a group, to the exclusion of verbs such as ulhu
‘cook’ or maro ‘be dead’—the derivational patterns in this article hold true for MLP verbs
alone. Note that there should very much be words that are mostly in these categories but
exceptional in some way, or words in unexpected categories, or any of a number of other
kinds of irregularity; but as Mirja’s lexicon isn’t really developed very well yet, I haven’t
found any exceptional words so far.

As a note, while MLP verbs have access to derivational patterns that imply causation,
Mirja also has an inflectional causative -sn. Use of the inflectional causative usually implies
a type of causation that’s much less semantically ‘bound into’ the action, for lack of a better
word—a difference that in English can sort of be gotten at by comparing roll a ball versus
make a ball roll. The exact differences still need some working out, though.

Categories of MLP verbs

There are so far seven separate categories of MLP verbs, each of which is discussed in no
particular order below.
2
I use two unusual symbols for glossing nonconcatenative morphology in Mirja—one asterisk represents
the floating feature bundle that is a topic marker, and two represents the (C)VVCV# template that marks
collective plurality.
3
Katala does have a potential reading ‘cause a train to move by some other means besides driving it, e.g.
pushing on it’, but this is odd and marked.

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 Static object verbs
This category primarily contains verbs describing the location or motion of objects that do
not commonly move without human agency—e.g. stones, books, electronics, furniture, and
so on. These take as basic the ‘be located’ meaning (e.g. ikke ‘for a laptop or other medium-
sized portable electronic device to be there’), must be derived into ‘cause to move’ (ikkema
‘move a laptop’), and that form must be further derived into ‘move’ (ikkemava ‘for a laptop
to move’). The last of these categories is fairly rare, and usually has to do with accidents and
other sorts of not only unintended but also undesirable motion:

(3) no mallappa ikkemavapiketonasiite

no malla -ppa ikkemava -pike -tona -sii -t -e
1SG laptop -POSS for.laptop.to.move -off .of -table -fall -PST -INV
“My laptop moved as a laptop off of (whatever) table by falling.”
Or: “My laptop fell off the table.”

Static object verbs and mobile object verbs also share a special derivational form for car-
rying objects, -so: ikkeso ‘carry as one carries a laptop’.

Mobile object verbs

This category contains objects which are fairly likely to move without any human agency,
such as balls and sheets of paper and so on. These verbs take the ‘move’ meaning as most
basic (xallhe ‘for a liquid to flow’), and can be derived into ‘be located’ (xallhessa ‘for a
liquid to be located’) and ‘cause to move’ (xallhere ‘pour or pump a liquid’).4

Vehicle verbs
Verbs relating to motion involving a vehicle are somewhat more complex than other verbs,
as they have an additional possible derived form. These verbs usually take the ‘move’ mean-
ing as basic (e.g. sima ‘for a car to move’), but alongside derivations for ‘be located’ (simassa
‘for a car to be located’) and ‘cause to move’ (or rather ‘drive/pilot’; simami ‘drive a car’),
there is also a derivation for ‘take as transit’ (simaane ‘ride in a car’). The difference be-
tween the last two revolves around the agency of the subject—the subject of simami is
actively directing where the car is going, while the subject of simaane is merely in the car
and allowing some other person or force to direct the car towards whatever the subject’s
destination is.

This results in something of an odd problem when attempting to handle situations where
a human is riding on an animal, which has some independent volition but is being guided
towards a destination nonetheless. There is no truly appropriate derivation—for e.g. okko
‘for a horse or other hoofed animal to move’, okkomi sounds as if the subject has replaced the
horse’s brain with a computer to allow direct control, while okkoone sounds as if the horse
needs little more guidance than a taxi driver might. Mirja speakers rarely ride animals, so
this isn’t a particularly problematic gap for daily life; but it isn’t quite clear how one might
handle historical situations!
4
In the case of liquids in particular, it’s usually much more natural to describe interactions like carrying in
terms of whatever container is being used. A phrase like eno xallheso ‘carry tea’ basically implies it’s being
carried in cupped hands or some other similar very direct means; usually something like eno kojaso ‘carry [a
bottle of] tea’ (from koja ‘for a bottle or other tallish cylindrical container to be there’) is more natural.

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 Mirja

Human motion/location verbs

Human motion verbs are unusual in Mirja, in that they also contain information about the
manner of motion—something lacking in most other verbs. These verbs specify not only
that what is moving is a human, but also how that human is moving or being located: there
are thus separate verbs for ‘walk’ (su) and ‘run’ (tesse). As a result, most of these don’t have
derived forms like other motion verbs—rather than e.g. deriving su ‘for a human to walk’ into
?sutthy (‘for a human to walk without moving’?), there is simply an entirely separate verb
root: deka ‘for a human to stand’. Occasionally it’s necessary to use a human location verb in
a situation where the literal state of the person is largely irrelevant, e.g. ‘leaving’ someone
in a relationship sense; in these situations often the person’s current state is what’s used—so
‘don’t leave me’ is usually no dekarhisili ‘don’t leave me standing [here]’ when the speaker is
standing and no wejerhisili ‘don’t leave me sitting [here]’ when the speaker is sitting down.

Note that these verbs are specific to humans, and are not commonly used with animals—
‘for a horse to run’ is okkopasa, from okko ‘for a horse to move’ plus -pasa ‘hurriedly, quickly’.
Using human verbs for animals implies a human-like quality to the movement—for example,
one might jokingly use su to describe those videos of cats shuffling around on their back
legs.

Digital objects
The digital world is treated as a basic semantic space in Mirja, unlike in natlangs, which
usually get at digital concepts via metaphors based in physical reality. For example, while
in English we must ‘send’ a text message, conjuring up the image of a physical parcel be-
ing physically conveyed from one location to another, the Mirja verb jepa ‘send text as a
digital message’ is a simple, dedicated verb with no such metaphoric basis. In fact, Mirja
instead builds some relatively basic metaphors on digital reality, rather than the other way
around—the English verb ‘know’ (a fact) is usually translated using a possession construc-
tion involving the verb tirha, which literally means ‘for digital text data to be there’. This
metaphor ABSTRACT CONCEPTS ARE DIGITAL INFORMATION is found throughout Mirja.

Digital static objects

Digital objects which are primarily stored and accessed rather than sent from place to
place fall into this category. These take ‘be located’ as their basic form, and has one de-
rived form for both ‘copy’ (the digital analogue of ‘move’) and ‘be copied’: nega ‘for digital
audio(visual) data to be located’, negaga ‘for digital audio(visual) data to be copied; to copy
digital audio(visual) data’. Unlike in the case of the physical ‘move’ analogue, the semantics
of these ‘copy’ derivations do not imply that the copied object no longer occupies its original
location—ma negagallhago ‘[I]’ll send it (a video) to you’ does not imply that you will cease
to possess the video yourself. There is a separate derivation for that, which is effectively
‘cut and paste’: negarilu ‘copy digital audio(visual) data and then delete the copy in the original
location’.

Digital sent objects

This category is for digital objects whose primary purpose is to be sent between people
or devices rather than to be stored and accessed. There is so far exactly one verb in this
category, jepa ‘send text as a digital message’, and I’m not sure there will ever be more—it
seems to me that almost everything that’s more basically ‘sent’ than ‘stored’ is text data.
Perhaps those young people who use Snapchat, though, would want an additional one for
‘send video as a digital message’! Jepa can be derived into jepja ‘for a digital text message
to be located’; the equivalent to ‘move’ or ‘copy’ is simply implied by obfuscating the subject

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via marking the object as a topic and pro-dropping the subject.

MLP verbs and other (semi)derivational affixes

Most MLP verbs can take other kinds of affixes that either derive yet other types of verbs
or supply the kinds of information English speakers might expect to be included in the
verb root. The first category involves affixes that derive verbs of obtaining, such as -gat
‘‘purchase’’ or -raeva ‘steal’, creating verbs such as simagata ‘purchase a car’ or tirhalhaeva
‘steal digital text information’. Most of these can be used with most kinds of MLP verbs except
human verbs. This category also includes affixes relating to putting things in certain states,
which can be used with human location verbs as well as a few motion verbs—e.g. dekarhisi
‘leave [a person] standing there’, or kataanerhisi ‘leave [a person] to take the train’. Some
non-MLP verbs can take some of these affixes, though; -rhisi for example is valid with any
sort of state or activity: janarhisi ‘leave [someone] while they’re singing’; marolhisi ‘leave for
dead’.

The second includes Mirja’s wide range of manner affixes, which are productive enough to
be somewhere on the line between derivation and inflection—allowing you to create verbs
such as xallheresii ‘pour a liquid’, literally ‘cause a liquid to flow by falling’, or simamiiny
‘drive a car back to where you were / it was before’. Some non-MLP verbs can take some
of these manner affixes—e.g. ulhuvije ‘cook easily or carelessly’—but many combinations
are nonsensical or extremely odd (for example, when would one ever use ulhusii ‘cook by
falling’?)

MLP verbs can obviously also take any of Mirja’s dizzying range of applicatives; see (3)
for an example of a motion verb plus an applicative with an incorporated generic object.
Applicative affixes usually have both a motion and a location interpretation; e.g. -pike in
the above example means ‘in a trajectory off of’, but can also mean ‘below and over a bit
from’ (e.g. tona rykypike ‘it [a book] is on the ground next to the table’).

Despite the amount of time Mirja has been in the works, it is still very much in the initial
stages of development—this article represents pretty much the entirety of what I’ve done
with motion verbs so far. Its set of derivational affixes in particular is badly in need of
expansion! Still, I’m quite happy with what I’ve got so far—the system seems to be working
quite well despite its extreme difference from everything I’ve ever gotten used to, and I
think it’s accomplishing its goals well. I hope to be able to share more about Mirja in the
future—especially some of the other fun things it does that are wholly unrelated to verb
semantics!

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 11 South Aeranid Alignment

by as Avridán

Synchronic and diachronic approaches

(1) Yo veo guinas querizas eu los sanos co los astros, tan ziem Southern Tevrés
vehel yo.
[ɟo ˈvejo ˈɰinas keˈɾið̥az̥ ewloˈsanos koloˈz̥astɾos | tãn ˈð̥jẽm beˈel ˈjo]
yo ve -o guin - as queriz - as eu l
1SG.DIR.EMPH know - 1SG.A NEG - CYC.IND.PL mind - IND.PL from DEF
- os san - os co l - os astr - os tan
- TEM.DIR.PL god - DIR.PL and DEF - TEM.DIR.PL spirit - DIR.PL but
ziem veh -el yo
they.TEM.IND.PL know -1SG.P 1SG.DIR.EMPH
“I do not know the minds of the gods and the spirits, but they know me.”

As John Muir once wrote, ‘[w]hen we try to pick out anything by itself, we find
it hitched to everything else in the Universe.’ This quote should by no doubt
resonate with conlangers, who frequently attempt to delve into one aspect or
another of language, be it syntax, semantics, phonetics, etc., and find themselves
entwined in a web of connections to every other field of linguistics. One cannot
approach morphology without an understanding of syntax, nor syntax without
an understanding of semantics, and so on and so forth. In the same vein, in this
article, I will attempt to explain the odd behavior of verbs in a number of my
related naturalistic artlangs, however in doing so I am forced to examine other
areas of the grammar, especially nominal morphology. I hope that his article
may be a lesson on how the categories we like to think of as discrete—noun and
verb, morphology and syntax—are actually a part of an intricately intertwined
web, which cannot be disentangled.

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 South Aeranid

Late Aeranir

Southern Band Northern Band

Valic Pompic Hileric Illydic Iscarianic

S’entigneis Murraol Vominyà Ertrañán Tevrés Ilêsse Lădes Iscariano Mignunissu

Figure 1: The Aeranid language family. Members of the SAS are highlighted in purple.

Note: the following article is written from the perspective on an ‘in-world’ linguist.
Luckily, in the canon of this conworld, they have access to all of our world’s
linguistic literature, and draw heavily upon it.

Introduction
The South Aeranid Sprachbund (SAS) is an areal language grouping which covers much
of south and west Ephenia, roughly coinciding with the kingdoms of Tevrén and S’entin,
and the Fásr province of Upper Kális, in the Primary Material Plane of System 12093031α
(hereforth called ‘Avríd’). The majority of its members are part of the Southern Band Aeranid
language family, descending from Late Aeranir, of the Iscaric branch of the Maro-Ephenian
family. In the past, this has lead scholars to believe that their shared characteristics were
genetic rather than areal, however the presence of a single Northern Band language, Ilêsse,
which shares many key SAS features, has lead scholars to revise this and arrive at the current
conclusion, that SAS is indeed an areal grouping not a purely genetic one. One of the
characteristic features of SAS languages, and the focus of this paper, is a peculiar system of
morphosyntactic agreement and alignment, which is unusual to Avríd, even amongst Maro-
Ephenian languages, which in turn already feature a system which is unattested in our own
world.

A great deal of writing has been

dedicated to describing this sys-
tem, referred to as South Aeranid
Alignment (SAA), from a func-
tional, synchronic perspective. Note
that here, ‘Alignment’ refers to
two discrete but related phenom-
ena. The first is transitive cod-
ing (Creissels, 2018); the coding
of agents and patients via case in
uses of core transitive verbs. These
are bivalent verbs which include
among their arguments a typical
agent (i.e. a sapient participant
consciously and willingly control-
ling an activity oriented towards
Figure 2: South Aeranid Sprachbund
the other participant) and a typical
patient (i.e. a participant undergo-
ing a change of state or position triggered by the activity of an agent). They are often
typified by the verb break. However, all languages extend transitive coding past the small
set of core transitive verbs. Murraol uir ‘see,’ batar ‘hit,’ and cànyer ‘eat,’ for example, are

Page 98
not core transitive verbs, because they do not have typical agents or patients, however they
are bivalent, and assign coding to their two participants identically to core transitive verbs.
Thus, they are said to be transitive verbs. The more agent-like argument of a transitive verb
is referred to as A, whereas the more patient-like argument is referred to as P. Languages
wherein A is coded the same as S, the single argument of an intransitive verb, and different
marking is assigned to P, are identified as having accusative alignment, whereas those which
do the opposite; group P and S and mark A differently, are said to have ergative alignment.
Here, S, A, and P are referred to as syntactic roles.

The second phenomenon encompassed by SAA is argument indexing (Haspelmath, 2013).

Often called agreement, indices are mandatory bound person forms which attach to the verb
and refer to one of its core arguments; usually either the subject or object. These indices
carry information related to the argument they index, often referred to as φ-features. In SAS
languages, the relevant φ-features are person (first, second, or third), number (singular or
plural), and gender (temporary or cyclical1 ). The syntactic role of some arguments, whether
A or P, is sometimes also indexed on the verb, and the conditions under which such indexing
is motivated shall be one of the primary objects of exploration for this paper. Often, a
full, independent noun or determiner will appear alongside its index in the sentence, in
which case we may say that said argument is coindexed. In some languages, multiple core
participants are indexed on the verb,2 however SAS languages tend to only index a single
argument. The selection mechanism for the indexed argument shall also be a major focus
of this paper.

In all languages with SAA, there are at least three core inflectional nominal cases, which
here shall be referred to as direct, accusative, and indirect. The direct case is used to code
S, A in sentences lacking Speech-Act-Participants (SAPs; the first and second person; the
speaker or addressee), and SAP arguments regardless of their role within the predicate. The
accusative case encodes P in sentences lacking SAPs, and the indirect case marks the non-
SAP argument of sentences with an SAP argument, likewise regardless of role3 . This gives
rise to three distinct patterns of transitive coding for <A, P>. With predicates lacking an
SAP, the coding frame is <DIR, ACC>. When A is an SAP, the frame is <DIR, IND>, and
when P is an SAP, it is <IND, DIR>. When both A and P are SAPs, first person arguments
take precedent over second person arguments in taking the direct case4 . Because DIR also
encodes S, the first two of these coding strategies may be labelled as accusative (A=S≠P),
whereas the final one is considered ergative (A≠S=P).

It is not uncommon for languages to display this kind of split ergativity. SAPs are consid-
ered highly animate (or salient, sympathetic, etc.), and animacy is a very cross-linguistically
common trigger for ergative splits. What is peculiar, however, is the differential P marking
between the two ‘accusative’ coding frames. But the peculiarities do not end there. Typi-

1
The terms ‘temporary’ and ‘cyclical’ come to us from Aeranid theological, philosophical, and historical
tradition. Under more usual typologies, they may be classified as ‘common’ and ‘abstract,’ however in reality
they are incredibly semantically hollow, and nouns of all sorts may appear in either category.
2
This sort of indexing, usually referred to as polypersonal agreement, is present in some branches of ME,
most notably Modern Talothic. In Golden Age Aeranir, multiple arguments could be indexed on the verb via a
combination of inflectional affixes and clitic pronouns, however the latter were lost in all daughter languages.
3
Each of these cases has other, non core uses as well. The direct case is very commonly used in SAS
languages for adnominal modification, and various prepositions used to form adjunct phrases govern specific
cases. For example, in (1), eu los sanos appears in the direct case to modify querizas in a genitive construction,
not because it is a core argument
4
At the surface level, core participant SAPs rarely ever actually marked for case, as SAS languages tend
towards excessive pro-dropping (especially in Hileric Languages), however they may be retained, and coded as
described above, for emphatic purposes, the exact nature of which differ between languages, but in generally
include phenomena such as contrasting focus.

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 South Aeranid

cally, verbs that index a single argument of a transitive predicate tend to index the argument
with the most accessible m(orphological)-case, which is generally also the the least marked
case (i.e. that which also marks S), although A is usually also accessible for indexing, even
in ergative constructions, where it is more marked than P (Bobalijk, 2006). Thus, one may
expect that the verb would either a.) always index the DIR argument, or b.) always index
A. Surprisingly, neither of these are the case. Instead, we find that the first and third coding
frames show P-indexing (<DIR, ACC> and <IND, DIR> respectively, with bold face show-
ing the the argument being indexed by the verb), whilst only the second shows A-indexing
(<DIR, IND>). This is highly unusual, as according to Bobalijk, ACC should be incapable of
licensing indexation. This is a pattern which, as mentioned, is unattested in out own world,
however preliminary research may suggest that it is more common than initially assumed
on Avríd, and perhaps in other Planar Systems as well (Lucretia, 5781).

Because A in the second coding frame is marked with DIR and indexed on the verb, this
combination of transitive coding and argument indexing is referred to as the A-oriented
system. By the same token, the third combination is called the P-oriented system. Because
in the first system, A is encoded by DIR, but P (marked ACC) is indexed, it is referred to
as the split-system. These three systems are demonstrated respectively in (2), and together
form what is known as Southern Aeranid Alignment. In these examples, boldface marks the
indexed argument, as well as the verbal index itself.

(2) a. L’harine j’oi. Capitoline S’entigneis

[làʁín ʐwɛ̂]
l’= harin-e j’= oi-Ø
DEF= priest -IND.SG 1SG.DIR= see-1SG.A
“I see the priest.” <DIR, IND>
b. Harina oyel yo. Southern Tevrés
[aˈɾina o̯ˈjel ˈjo]
harin-a oy -el yo
priest -IND.SG see -1SG.P 1SG.DIR.EMPH
“The priest sees me.” <IND, DIR>
c. Evèlli-i ouzi ariñe-u. Ilêsse
[ɨˈvɛʎij ˈɔwzʲ ɐˈɾiɲɨw]
evèl - li =i ouz - i ariñ -e
child - DIR.PL = DEF.TEM.DIR.PL see - TEM3SG priest:TEM - ACC.SG
=u
=DEF.TEM.ACC.SG
“The children see the priest.” <DIR, ACC>

(3) L’harì clavas. Vominyà

[laˈɾi ˈklavɔs]
l’= harì-Ø clav -as
DEF= priest:TEM-DIR.SG laugh -TEM3SG
“The priest laughs.” <DIR>

Note the differing uses of DIR in the above examples; in (2a) and (2c) it marks A, whereas
in (2b) it marks P, and in (3) it marks S. Also note that (2a) and (2b) are only morpho-
logically differentiated by verbal index. Separate forms are used to index A as opposed to

Page 100
P. Thus, perspectivization of the event may be wholly reversed simply by altering a bit of
verbal morphology. In this respect, SAA bears similarity to direct/inverse systems, where
marking (often order) is fixed due to some semantic property, with role assigned by verbal
morphology, as well as Philippine-type voice systems, which privilege a certain participant
regardless of role. Finally, note that in (2c), although A is coded by DIR, P is indexed,
whereas indexing aligns with DIR in all other examples. Furthermore, there is no special
marking on the verb to indicate the role of the indexed argument, and the verbs in (2c) and
(3) are marked identically.5

It is the goal of this article to examine this system, to offer both a descriptive, synchronic
explanation regarding its mechanics, to analyse its underlying motivating factors, and to
explore how such a system came to be in the first place through a diachronic lens. This
paper shall also touch on the consequences of the formation of this system outside of the
prototypical transitive sentence, including how it has shaped intransitive and ditransitive
constructions. We will draw predominantly from three languages: the Capitoline dialect
of S’entigneis (henceforth simply ‘S’entigneis’), the southern dialect of Tevrés (likewise
‘Tevrés’), and Ilêsse, as these are the among the most well documented languages displaying
SAA, and are otherwise structurally diverse enough to highlight their shared features.

A synchronic view
Before delving into the synchronic workings of SAA, it is useful to establish a few prelim-
inaries. At the heart of SAA are two fundamental hierarchies; the animacy hierarchy and
the obliqueness hierarchy. The animacy hierarchy is based off the semantic properties of
an argument, i.e. its meaning, with more animate arguments appearing higher in the hier-
archy, and less animate arguments appearing lower. At the top of the animacy hierarchy
are first and second person pronouns, i.e. SAPs. This is represented in (4), adapted from
Kiparsky (2008:9). The obliqueness hierarchy, however, relates to syntax, ranking argu-
ments according to their grammatical function vis à vis the verb. More oblique arguments,
those which are more similar to the eject (also called the indirect object) rank higher in the
hierarchy, whereas those less so, which are more similar to the subject, rank lower. Low-
ranking functions may also be called nuclear, as opposed to oblique. These are laid out in
(5).

(4) The animacy hierarchy

1Pro 2Pro 3Pro Proper Noun / Kin Term Human Animate Inanimate

(5) The obliqueness hierarchy

Extended Eject Eject Object Subject

‘Grammatical function’ here is used to refer to a grouping of syntactic roles. In addition

to S, A, and P, here we include the syntactic roles associated with ditransitive, or so called
5
Intransitive verbs always index S, naturally, although the way in which SAA languages index SAP S is a
matter of some variation. The most common pattern, found in Tevrés, is to simply use the A-aligned endings,
however in Murraol, a system of split-intransitive alignment is found, wherein more agent-like S is indexed
with A-aligned endings, and more patient-like S is indexed by P-aligned endings. In S’entigneis, however,
unique SAP endings are present which appear only on intransitive verbs; compare Tev. migo / Mur. meguel
/ Sen. miut ‘I die.’

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 South Aeranid

‘three-place’ predicates: D6 (the most donor or agent-like argument), T (the most theme-like
argument), and R (the most recipient or goal-like argument). The subject comprises of S, A,
and D, whereas the object includes of P and T, and the eject7 lone R. An even more oblique
grammatical function, the extended eject, is only present when the valency of a ditransitive
verb is increased by a valency-changing-operation (VCO), such as a causative or applicative,
however the syntactic and thematic role of the extended eject is somewhat murky, as the
latter varies greatly depending on the exact construction used, and the former is difficult
to propose based on the lack of a prototypical class of ‘tritransitive’ verbs. Thus the first of
these three grammatical functions are given in (6).

(6) SAA grammatical functions

Subject S A D Object P T Eject R

The system described in the previous section may seem a touch arbitrary, but in fact it
follows quite naturally from the hierarchies described above, along with a few other simple
rules. The way these rules contribute to produce the coding and indexing patterns which
we observe may be best described as a coherent whole using Optimality Theory (OT). OT is
a way of mapping inputs and outputs. It is often used in phonology to describe the phonetic
rules which lead from the underlying form of a word to the realised surface form, however it
has also been applied to other linguistic fields, including syntax (Legendre, 2001; Legendre &
Sorace, 2003). For any given input, the grammar generates an infinite number of potential
outputs, or candidates, which are evaluated based on a number of hierarchically ranked
markedness constraints. Often in OT, all candidates will violate some restraints, however,
the candidate which violates the lowest level of constraints will be selected by the grammar
as the output, or observed form.

In the case of SAA, there are three main inputs which are of concern to this paper: <ASAP ,
P>, <A, PSAP >, and <A, P>. These are the three inputs behind the A-oriented, P-oriented,
and split-systems respectively. We may also call these A-SAP, P-SAP, and NOSAP. Because
there are a finite number of cases which may encode an argument (3), a limited amount
of arguments (2), and the verb can only index one argument, considering all possible com-
binations of coding and indexing, there are eighteen possible candidates. Many of these,
however, may be immediately disqualified by the simplest, highest ranking constraints. For
example, we may postulate a constraint that requires one and only one argument to be
coded DIR, which may be called ONEDIR. As DIR is the least marked case (or the zero case,
as framed in Creissels, 2018), this is a fairly unremarkable rule, and all outputs have pre-
cisely one direct argument. Furthermore, we may stipulate a constraint NOACCSUB, which
eliminates any candidate which codes the subject with ACC, as it is quite common, cross-
linguistically, for there to be a marked case which only marks P (often called ‘accusative’), as
well as another, perhaps even more marked case which may mark either A or P, depending
on the circumstances (often called ‘dative’ or ‘oblique,’ here called ‘indirect’). Finally, the
constraint NOINDDEX disallows indexing of arguments coded IND, in keeping with Bobalijk’s
observation that some m-cases are not accessible to indexation. These constraints alone nar-
row down the field of candidates significantly, from eighteen to only four, which are listed
in (7).
6
In much of the literature on ditransitives, A is used for both transitive and ditransitive predicates, as both
are thought to involve agent-like arguments. Some authors, in order to differentiate the two and three-place
predicates, use A₁ for transitives and A₂ for ditransitives (Haspelmath, 2011:553), however here, for the sake
of clarity, we use D for the latter.
7
In other literature, this often corresponds to the indirect object, secondary object, or extended core argu-
ment.

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(7) a. <DIR, ACC> b. <DIR, IND>
c. <DIR, ACC> d. <IND, DIR>

From here, we may begin to apply constraints based on the hierarchies introduced above.
First, we have the animacy hierarchy, which engenders two constraints: SAP arguments
must be indexed by the verb (SAPDEX), and SAP arguments must be coded DIR (SAPDIR). In
situations with multiple SAP arguments, the more animate argument takes prominence with
regards to these constraints. The obliqueness hierarchy provides an additional rule, PRIOBL,
under which the most oblique argument must be given privileged status. Here, privileged
status refers to one of two phenomena: verbal indexing, or coding via DIR or IND. Lastly,
there is a constraint against double privileging of a single argument (NODUB), i.e. coding
an argument with either DIR or IND and indexing it on the verb. These constraints are used
to evaluate the four candidates outlined in Tables 1-3, given our three inputs. Constraints
which are violated are marked with an asterisk (*), and those which trigger a failure are
marked with an exclamation mark (!). If a candidate violates multiple constraints, only the
highest level violation which triggers a failure is marked. The selected output is marked by
an arrow (Ñ).

A-SAP SAPDEX SAPDIR PRIOBL NODUB

<DIR, ACC> *! *
Ñ <DIR, IND> *
<DIR, ACC> *!
<IND, DIR> *! * *
Table 1: A-SAP input-output: A-oriented system

P-SAP SAPDEX SAPDIR PRIOBL NODUB

<DIR, ACC> *! * * *
<DIR, IND> *! * *
<DIR, ACC> *!
Ñ <IND, DIR> *
Table 2: P-SAP input-output: P-oriented system

NOSAP SAPDEX SAPDIR PRIOBL NODUB

<DIR, ACC> *! *
<DIR, IND> *!
Ñ <DIR, ACC>
<IND, DIR> *!
Table 3: NOSAP input-output: split-system

Ditransitive verbs
The constraints described above are able to accurately predict the coding and indexing
output for transitive predicates. However, if these are to be true rules of SAA grammar, their
real test ought to be whether they hold up in all relevant domains. While most of them are
irrelevant to intransitive coding (really, ONEDIR alone is sufficient), none are contradicted
by it. Thus, we may also hope to see that the constraints laid out for transitive coding and
indexing may also apply to ditransitive verbs, although no doubt additional rules are also
necessary. If the rules for transitive verbs fail to integrate into those of ditransitive verbs,

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or if the new ditransitive constraints contradict the transitive ones, this may be grounds for
reanalysis of either or both systems.

As noted earlier, the coding frame for ditransitive verbs may be represented as <D, T, R>.
Cross-linguistically speaking, D is generally coded identically to transitive A, i.e. in an ac-
cusative system, it takes the zero-case in both transitive and ditransitive predicates, whereas
in ergative systems it takes the more marked case (Haspelmath, 2011). However, there is
a three way split between coding methods for T and R, which somewhat mirrors the three
way split in A and P coding. In indirective alignment, T is coded identically to transitive
P, with R marked differently, mirroring accusative alignment (T=P≠R::A=S≠P), while in
secundative alignment, R is coded the same as P, and T is marked differently, mirroring erga-
tive alignment (T≠P=R::A≠S=P). Finally, in neutral alignment, T and R are both coded
identically to P, just as A and P are coded identically to S in transitive neutral alignment
(T=P=R::A=S=P). Languages with SAA display both neutral and secundative alignment.
Secundative alignment is used when D or R is an SAP (D-SAP and R-SAP), whereas neutral
alignment is used for NOSAP. As with transitive verbs, SAP arguments are always indexed on
the verb. As for NOSAP, despite showing neutral marking, there is a degree of secundativity,
as R, like P, is the argument selected for verbal indexation.

(8) a. Yo zoy peño las harinas. Tevrés

[ˈɟo ˈð̥oj ˈpeɲo laz̥aˈɾinas]
yo z -oy peñ -o l -as harin -as
1SG.DIR.EMPH give -1SG.A bread -ACC.SG DEF -TEM.IND.PL priest -IND.PL
“I’m giving bread to the priests.” <DIR, ACC, IND>
b. Ariñe-e êu çao penu. Ilêsse
[ɐˈɾiɲej ˈew ˈtsɐo̯ ˈpɨnʷ]
ariñ -e =e êu ç- ao pen -u
priest -IND.PL =DEF.TEM.IND.PL 1SG.DIR give- 1SG.P bread -ACC.SG
“The priests are giving me bread.” <IND, ACC, DIR>
c. Les harins cie pan la cele. S’entigneis
[lɛ̀zà̺ ʁɛ̃̀ z̻ǐ pɑ̃̂ làz̻él]
l - es harin - s ci - e pan - Ø l
DEF - TEM.DIR.SG priest - DIR.SG give - CYC3SG bread - ACC.SG DEF
-a cel -e
-CYC.ACC.SG cat:CYC -ACC.SG
“The priests are giving the cat bread.” <DIR, ACC, ACC>

Because D-SAP encodes D identically to A (using DIR) in the A-oriented system, and the
same indices are used, sentences like (8a) are considered to fall under the extended A-
oriented system, and likewise R-SAP, as given in (8b), falls under the P-oriented system, as P
and R are coded the same (DIR), and P-indexing endings are used. Because here, NOSAP (8c)
shows neutral coding but secundative indexing (that is, the verb indexes the least marked
argument under secundative alignment—the ‘primative argument’ R (Haspelmath, 2011)—
not that it indexes the secundative argument itself), it is also considered to be a part of the
split-system. Note that the two clauses with SAPs both mark the secundative argument, T,
with the accusative. In the split-system, the only verbal indexing signals which accusative
argument is T and which is R. Of course, in the A-aligned and P-oriented systems, the roles
of DIR and IND are likewise only signalled on the the verb.

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 We may now begin to evaluate whether or not the constraints applied to transitive verbs are
also applicable to ditransitive ones. There are a great deal more initial candidates for three-
place verbs than for two-place ones, given three arguments, coded with three possible cases,
with one of three indexed by the verb, yielding eighty-one possibilities. However, using the
first four constraints set forth in this paper, LEASTONEDIR, JUSTONEDIR, NOACCSUB, and
NOINDDEX, eighty-one may be narrowed down to merely sixteen. In addition, because
there are no observed outputs with multiple IND coded arguments, we may also stipulate a
high-level constraint ONEIND, similar to ONEDIR in content and rank, which forbids coding
frames with multiple IND arguments. However, unlike ONEDIR, it does not mandate an
indirect argument be present; rather it sets a maximum at one. There are pragmatic reasons
for this constraint as well; as IND cannot be indexed by the verb, there would be no means
of distinguishing multiple IND coded arguments. This subtracts a further five candidates,
bringing the pool to a more manageable eleven. To these eleven, we may apply the four
other constraints applied to transitive verbs, and observe if they produce the correct outputs.

D-SAP SAPDEX SAPDIR PRIOBL NODUB

<DIR, ACC, ACC> *! *
Ñ <DIR, ACC, IND> *
<DIR, IND, ACC> *! *
<DIR, ACC, ACC> *! *
<DIR, ACC, IND> *!
<IND, DIR, ACC> *! * * *
<IND, ACC, DIR> *! *
<DIR, ACC, ACC> *!
<DIR, IND, ACC> *!
<IND, DIR, ACC> *! *
<IND, ACC, DIR> *! * *
Table 4: D-SAP input-output: A-oriented system

R-SAP SAPDEX SAPDIR PRIOBL NODUB

<DIR, ACC, ACC> *! * * *
<DIR, ACC, IND> *! * *
<DIR, IND, ACC> *! * * *
<DIR, ACC, ACC> *! * *
<DIR, ACC, IND> *! *
<IND, DIR, ACC> *! * * *
<IND, ACC, DIR> *!
<DIR, ACC, ACC> *!
<DIR, IND, ACC> *!
<IND, DIR, ACC> *!
Ñ <IND, ACC, DIR> *
Table 5: R-SAP input-output: P-oriented system

As we can see in Tables 4 and 5, these rules are able to accurately predict the correct
coding and indexing frames for D-SAP and R-SAP, but not for NOSAP (Table 6), which
yields five tied candidates. Because the correct output, <DIR, ACC, ACC> is among these
candidates, we may infer that the constraints proposed so far are not fallacious, but rather,
insufficient. Additional constraints are necessary to generate the correct output. Looking
at all five candidates, we may observe that the common thread between all non-outputs
is privileged marking of T, be it through indexing or coding. Thus, we may be tempted
to postulate a simple constraint which disallows privileged marking of T. Whilst this may

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 South Aeranid

NOSAP SAPDEX SAPDIR PRIOBL NODUB

<DIR, ACC, ACC> *! *
<DIR, ACC, IND> !*
<DIR, IND, ACC> *! *
<DIR, ACC, ACC> *!
?? <DIR, ACC, IND>
<IND, DIR, ACC> *! *
?? <IND, ACC, DIR>
?? <DIR, ACC, ACC>
?? <DIR, IND, ACC>
?? <IND, DIR, ACC>
<IND, ACC, DIR> !*
Table 6: NOSAP input-output: split-system (inconclusive)

appear an elegant solution, and does indeed generate the correct output, it may also feel a
tad arbitrary. In opposition to this, we postulate a constraint that acts as a sort of balance to
PRIOBL, NOPRIMID, which forbids arguments of middling obliqueness, that is, those which
are neither most or least oblique, from taking any privileged marking. This achieves the
same end as a restriction on privileged T, however it has the benefit of universality8 . Table
7 is able to fully predict the output found in examples like (8c).

NO-SAP NOPRIMID PRIOBL NODUB

<DIR, ACC, IND> *!
<IND, ACC, DIR> *!
Ñ <DIR, ACC, ACC>
<DIR, IND, ACC> *!
<IND, DIR, ACC> *!
Table 7: NOSAP input-output: split-system (conclusive)

T­SAP, infinitives, and clefting

At this point, the attentive reader may have noticed a gap in our analysis. Whilst coding
and indexing for <DSAP , T, R> and <D, T, RSAP >, also called D-SAP and R-SAP, has been
examined, there has been no mention of the logical third member to this group, <D, TSAP ,
R>, or T-SAP. That omission, until this point, has been deliberate, as it provides yet another
wrinkle in the system of SAA. T-SAP presents an immediate challenge to the system of tran-
sitive coding. According to the constraints detailed thus far, the ideal coding and indexing
frame for T-SAP should be <IND, DIR, ACC>, however this is immediately problematic; vi-
olating NOPRIMID and PRIOBL. Whilst constraint violation under OT is acceptable, the fact
that (to get slightly ahead of ourselves) there are no outputs which violated these constraints,
suggests that, although thus-far they have been presented as fairly low ranking rules, they
may in fact be much higher ranking, above the SAP restrictions, around the same level as
PRINUC. Furthermore, <IND, DIR, ACC> is pragmatically problematic. Although we have
presented <D, T, R> in a consistent linear order, ordering in SAA languages is often prag-
matically and/or semantically motivated, and thus any order is acceptable, depending on
the context. Because there is no specific T-indexing verbal morphology, it would thus be
8
This rule may apply to all predicate types, regardless of transitivity. It accurately accounts for coding
and indexing with quadritransitive predicates, without the need for additional constraints. Although, for the
sake of brevity, this paper does not explicitly test all three-hundred-and-twenty-four possible quadritransitive
candidates, the enthusiastic reader may take their own time to lay out the OT tables, and observe that they
agree with the attested outputs.

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impossible to differentiate <IND, DIR, ACC>, <IND, ACC, DIR>, and <DIR, ACC, IND>.
However, before making a reassessment, it may be wise to examine the actual output of
coding and indexing for T-SAP, as well as another, similar construction.

(9) a. Poesina vadiólam yos a lo cuerço an avros. Tevrés

[po̯eˈz̥ina vaˈð̞jolãm ˈjoz̥ aloˈkweɾθo̯ aˈnavɾos]
poesin -a vad -iolam yos a= l -o cuerç -o
cook -IND.SG send -1PL.P 1PL.DIR to= DEF -TEM.ACC.SG market -ACC.SG
a= avr -os
to= fish -DIR.PL
“The cook sent us to the fish market.” <???>
b. Tluyr vades harenan muñer. Tevrés
[ˈɮ̊ujɾ ˈvað̞ez̥ aˈɾenãm muˈɲeɾ]
tluyr-Ø vad-es haren-an muñer-Ø
younger_sibling -DIR.SG send-TEM3SG letter -ACC.PL mother:TEM-ACC.PL
“(Our) younger sibling is sending letters to mother.” <DIR, ACC, ACC>

(9a) demonstrates prototypical T-SAP. The Tevrés verb vadir ‘to send, to make go’ is di-
transitive, the subject being the sender, the object the person or thing sent, and the eject
the destination or goal of the sending, as we can see in (9b). At first glance, the coding and
indexing frame for (9a) appears to be <IND, DIR, a ACC>, with R, i.e. the eject, coded with
the preposition a, and the accusative case. This analysis is tempting for a number of reasons.
If we take preposition marking to qualify as a type of privileged marking, then <IND, DIR, a
ACC> passes SAP constraints as well as PRINUC and PRIOBL, violating only NOPRIMID and
NODUB. However, such a high ranking violation is still somewhat undesirable. Further-
more, the possibility of preposition-coded arguments greatly expands the field of possible
candidates, requiring additional constraints to limit them only to T-SAP formations.

(10) a. J’ampai ve Tersine. S’entigneis

[ʐɑ̃̀pɛ̂ vtɐ̀sí̺ n]
j’= ampai -Ø v -e Tersin -e
1SG.DIR= know -1SG.A PROP -TEM.IND.SG NAME -IND.SG
“I know Tersin.” <DIR, IND>
b. A tu ampaie vi Tersin l’amaiz traver.
[átsɥ‿ɑ̃̀pɛ́ vìtɐ́sɛ̺ ̀̃ làmɛ̀ tsʁàvɛ́ɐ]̯
a= t -u ampai - e [CP v -i Tersin - Ø l’=
to= 1SG - IND know - CYC3SG PROP - TEM.DIR.SG NAME - DIR.SG DEF=
amaiz-Ø trav -er ]
market -ACC.SG go -INF
“I know [that Tersin is going to the market].” <???>

Putting a lampshade on that for now, we may examine the difference in frames between
(10a) and (10b). The former shows an instance of unremarkable, canonical transitive coding,
under the A-aligned system. The latter, however, presents further issues. First of all, a
complement phrase (CP), formed using the infinitive, fulfils the role of P, i.e. the object,
rather than a determiner phrase (DP) coded IND. On top of that, A is coded IND, additionally

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marked by the preposition a, which is especially odd, considering that SAPs are never coded
IND elsewhere. Finally, verbal indexing is somewhat ambiguous. There is not agreement
with the SAP, which is another major oddity. The verb appears to index a third person
singular cyclical argument, however no such arguments are present (Tersin and amaiz are
both temporary nouns). That last conundrum is the most easily solved; the main verb in
fact agrees with the infinitive, traver, or rather, the CP created using the infinitive, which
behaves like a third person singular cyclical argument. The phenomenon of mandatory
verbal infinitive indexation is well observed in Aeranid languages, and is known as the law
of infinite gravity. This gives us a coding frame that superficially appears as <a IND, INF>.

(11) a. ?Ti joñcha empaca. Tevrés

[ˈt ̪iˈɦ̥õɲtʃa ẽ̯mˈpaka]
t -i joñch -a empac -a
1SG -DIR leg:CYC -DIR.SG hurt -CYC3SG
Intended: “My leg hurts.”
b. A tu la joñcha empaca.
[aˈt ̪u laˈɦ̥õɲtʃa ẽ̯mˈpaka]
a= t -u l -a joñch -a empac -a
to= 1SG -IND DEF -CYC.DIR.SG leg:CYC -DIR.SG hurt -CYC3SG
“My leg hurts.”
lit. “To me the leg hurts.”
c. La joñcha empaca n te.
[laˈɦ̥õɲtʃa ẽ̯mˈpakã n̪ˈt ̪e]
l -a joñch -a empac -a a= t -e
DEF -CYC.DIR.SG leg:CYC -DIR.SG hurt -CYC3SG to= 1SG -ACC
“It’s me whose leg hurts.”
lit. “The leg hurts to me.”

Finally, let us turn to (11), which presents different types of pragmatically motivated
possessor-raising. In many SAS languages, highly salient possessors like personal pronouns,
especially in intransitive clauses, are very commonly promoted to the topic of the sentence.
(11a) is not wrong per se, and a possessor may not be promoted if another topic or con-
troller is present, however most speakers naturally produce utterances like (11b). The topic
is marked by the preposition a and the indirect case, and appears in the sentence-initial
position. There is also a focus construction which may be used similarly to promote posses-
sors, as detailed in (11c). In such situations, the focus is also marked by the preposition a,
however it is coded with the accusative case, and moved to sentence-final position.

What is the connection then, between (9a), (10), and (11)? A number of outwardly com-
mon structures may be observed; (9a) and (11c) share a phrase coded ACC and preceded
by a, whilst (10b) and (11c) share a sentence-initial phrase coded IND, also preceded by a.
However, these similar structures perform quite different functions. In (9a) and (10b), they
mark unambiguous arguments of the verb, whereas in (11) they mark promoted possessors.
Topic and focus are generally thought appear at a higher level in the sentence structure than
ordinary arguments, as the specifiers of C’9 and I’ respectively (Aissen, 1992:47), however
in (9a) and (10b), there are no signs of raising out of the verb phrase (VP), i.e. there is no
sign that they are topicalised or focalised, and additional true topics/foci may be added,
9
This is the case for what Aissen terms ‘internal topics,’ although ‘external topics’ behave slightly differ-
ently. However, they too appear higher in the syntactic structure than arguments.

Page 108
where this is impossible for (11); e.g. [TOP a l’amaize] a tu ampaie vi Tersin traver “[as
for the market] I know Tersin is going (there),” yos vadiólam a lo cuerço an avros [FOC
la poesina]10 “[It’s the cook] who sent us to the fish market,” but not *[TOP a la joñcha]
[TOP a tu] empaca nor *empaca [FOC a te] [FOC a la joñcha]. Therefore, these cannot be
functionally identical structures, even if they are identical on a surface level.

However, there is evidence of raising in (9a), but not of the preposition phrase (PP) an
avros, representing R. Rather, it is yos, T, which is raised. This demonstrates what has been
called a dative shift; the promotion of T and the backgrounding of R, usually via a PP, e.g.
“John sent Mary a letter” Ñ “John sent a letter to Mary” (Larson, 1988). This is essentially
a change in alignment; in the example of John and Mary, the first sentence shows neutral
alignment (T=P=R), whereas the second shows indirective; (T=P≠R), with the P-aligned
argument is an unmarked DP (sans preposition) appearing directly after the verb. In the
SAA examples, we see that (8b) shows secundative alignment (T≠P=R), whilst (9a) shows
indirective alignment, with P-aligned arguments coded DIRand indexed on the verb. This
may also be likened to a change in voice; a sort of passive, which demotes the P-aligned
argument (R) to a non-core function, and promotes the uniquely-aligned argument (T) to
P-aligned status. The only evidence of this change in voice is the coding of arguments; there
is no overt morphological signalling on the verb, nor any sort of periphrasis. In the same
vein, (10b) may be viewed as an unmarked voice shift, with A ejected from the core coding
frame, and P (here the CP/infinitive) being promoted to the S-aligned function.

But how does this square with our OT model? In order to answer that question, it is
necessary that we first examine a core principle of OT, which until this point has been
irrelevant. In OT, broadly speaking, there are two types of constraints. Until this point, we
have only examined markedness constraints which demand or prohibit certain features. In
order to understand (9a) and (10b), we must turn our attention to faithfulness constraints,
which prioritise resemblance between input and output. Up until now, there has been no
clear metric by which different candidates may be judged against one another in terms of
faithfulness; <IND, ACC, DIR> is no more or less ‘faithful’ to <D, T, R> than <DIR, ACC,
ACC>, or any other configuration. To understand what a faithfulness violation might look
like, we must switch our focus from the arguments which lie between the angle brackets,
the coding and indexing frame, to those brackets themselves.

As mentioned above, changes in voice are often accompanied by the demotion of an argu-
ment to a function which bears some similarities to an argument, but some to an adjunct.
For example, in some languages, a dropped core argument is always interpreted as having
an anaphoric reading; that is, a structure analogous to “I eat” is always interpreted as “I
eat (it),” whereas in others it is indeterminate; “I eat (something)” (SAA languages tend to
belong to the former group). However, when the passive is used, languages with anaphoric
interpretation may allow a dropped demoted argument to yield an indeterminate reading;
“it was eaten (by someone)” instead of “it was eaten (by them).” The demoted phrase’s role
and function are still defined by the verb, like an argument, but it is structurally unnecessary
and may be dropped, like an adjunct. For the sake of this paper, we shall categorise non-
demoted arguments as core arguments, and demoted arguments, which are still semantically
and structurally a part of the predicate, but at a less privileged level, non-core arguments.
Thus, in (9a) and (10b), R and A respectively are non-core arguments. Although they cannot
be dropped giving an indeterminate reading, they bear other adjunct-like qualities, such as
being PPs, and being ineligible for verbal indexing. To reflect this, we may represent the

10
Although a different focalising strategy—SAS languages tend to have many—is used here than in (11c),
the principle remains the same; a sentence may only have a single focus, and thus both an avros and la
poesina cannot both be foci.

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 South Aeranid

coding and indexing frames of these examples not as <IND, DIR, a ACC> and <a IND,
INF>, but as |<IND, DIR>, a ACC| and |a IND, <INF>|, with angle brackets representing
the core-argument coding and indexing frame, from which non-core arguments are ejected.
In these, we may postulate a faithfulness constraint, on the basis that |<D, T>, R| and |A,
<P>| represent a transformation from <D, T, R> and <A, P>, which we may call FAITH.
This eliminates candidates with clefting from the previously discussed frames (A-SAP, P-
SAP, NOSAP, R-SAP, etc.), as demonstraed in table 8. Taking this and the law of infinite
gravity (INFGRAV) into account, we may finally accurately predict the coding and indexing
outputs of ditransitive clauses, and clauses with infinitives, as demonstrated in tables 9 and
10:

T-SAP FAITH NODUB

Ñ <DIR, IND> *
<DIR> a ACC !* *
Table 8: A-SAP input-output: no cleft

T-SAP NOPRIMID FAITH

<IND, DIR, ACC> *!
Ñ <IND, DIR> a ACC *
Table 9: T-SAP input-output: P-oriented system with cleft

A-SAP P-INF INFGRAV SAPDEX SAPDIR FAITH

<DIR, INF> *!
<DIR, INF> *!
<IND, INF> *! *
Ñ a IND<INF> *
Table 10: A-SAP P-INF input-output: intransitive with cleft

Note that markedness constraints only apply to arguments within the core frame. That
means that arguments outside of the angle brackets are not evaluated in regards to SAP or
obliqueness constraints; although R in table 9 is semantically the most oblique argument,
because it is removed from the core frame, T is treated as the semantically most oblique
argument. Likewise, by removing the SAP from the core frame in table 10, it no longer vio-
lates SAPDEX, nor SAPDIR. Because successful candidates (outputs) for the other formations
violate either no constraints, or only NODUB, FAITH may be constituted at a relatively low
level without affecting what was covered before. Contrary to this, INFGRAV must be a high
level constraint, as it overrides the SAP constraints. Alternatively, INFGRAV may be reanal-
ysed as an extension of PRIOBL, as infinitives always act as the most oblique argument of a
verb, and, being unable to take case marking, can only be privileged by indexing. If this is
the case, than PRIOBL (and likely all constraints related to the obliqueness hierarchy) must
be raised above the SAP constraints. This does not alter the output for any of the formations
examined thus far, and provides a slightly more tidy, elegant explanation to the oddities of
SAA.

As a final note, the very astute reader may have noticed that, if A is not an SAP in infinitive
sentences, then there are no SAP constraint violations. Thus, there is no need for clefting,
and the frame <DIR, INF> may be used, as demonstrated in (12):

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(12) Uy poesín llaga tin tiedre. Tevrés
[ujpo̯eˈz̥ĩɲ ˈʎaɰa ˈt ̪ĩn̪ ˈt ̪jeð̞ɾe]
uy poesín-Ø llag-a [CP tin-Ø tied-re ]
DEF.TEM.DIR.SG cook-DIR.SG want -CYC3SG tea-ACC.SG drink-INF
“The cook wants to drink tea.”

A diachronic view
Thus, we may understand the underlying semantic and syntactic motivations behind South
Aeranid Alignment. It is essentially the interaction between co-occurring hierarchies. The
odd coding and indexing frame found in the split-system, accusative alignment but ergative
agreement, which is present in no languages in our own planar system, is a consequence
of the bipolar nature of the obliqueness hierarchy, which seeks to assign privileged status
to both ends of the spectrum. And yet, a question remains; even if we may understand the
structural and functional motivations for SAA, how did such a strange system come into
being in the first place? Whilst SAA is not simply an ‘epiphenomenon of change’ (Kiparsky,
2008) it does have a concrete diachronic foundation, which converges around these gram-
matical categories. In this section, we shall seek to elucidate that process, and explain the
historical evolution of SAA. To this end, we must begin with the ancestor of all SAA lan-
guages; Aeranir.

Aeranir was the language of the first Aerans, who settled in the city of Telhramir in upper
Iscaria c. 2600 BCA, and subsequently of the Aeranid Empire, which spanned across nearly
all of Ephenia, west Eubora, and north Seroea. It served as the official language of the
Empire for over a thousand years, until the Collapse in 1266 BCA, and continued to be used
in the petty Aeranid kingdoms which arose in its wake, where it splintered into the many
Aeranid languages seen today. Having been in use for such a long span of time, Aeranir
naturally went through multiple stages of development, shifting and changing as time went
on. To this day, a literary variety of the language, often called Clerical Aeranir, is still used
for religious, scientific, and formal purposes. To understand the evolution of SAA, we may
examine two of these stages; Golden Age Aeranir (GAA), the standard prestige language of
the height of the Aeranid Empire (c. 2200-1800 BCA), and Late Aeranir (LA), the vernacular
lingua franca of the Empire towards the end of its reign (c. 1400-1000 BCA).

Although one may assume that the split-system, the most typologically unusual feature
of SAA, is a historical innovation, and that the more normative A-oriented or P-oriented
systems represent the original coding and indexing system, the truth is actually the opposite.
The split-system is the more ancient of the three, being present not only in Aeranir, but
also its ancestor, Proto-Maro-Ephenian, and all other Maro-Ephenian languages, such as
Talothic, whilst the other two represent innovations. In GAA, the subject is coded using
the nominative case, the object the accusative case, and the eject the dative case. The verb
always indexes the most oblique argument, regardless of where it falls within any animacy
hierarchy. As such, there is a single series of personal endings, which do not convey any
information about the indexed arguments syntactic role. This is demonstrated in (13).

(13) a. Juva Calimius salvan. Golden Age Aeranir

[ˈjʊʋa kaˈlɪmjʊs̠ ˈs̠aɫʋãˑ]
juv -a Calimi -us salv -an
write -CYC3SG NAME -NOM.SG book:CYC -ACC.SG
“Calimius is writing a book.”

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 South Aeranid

b. Zavunt jūca altan zillāni.

[ˈtsaʋʊ̃n̪t ̪ ˈjuːka ˈaɫt ̪ãŋ tsɪlˈlaːnɪ]
za -v -unt jūc -a alt -an zill -āni
give -PFV -3PL scribe -NOM.SG water -ACC.SG cat:CYC -DAT.PL
“The scribe gave the cats water.”
c. Serua callitantus tē Boezymiō.
[ˈs̠ɛr̠wa kallɪˈt ̪ãn̪t ̪ʊs̠ ˈt ̪eː bøˑˈdzʏmjoˑ]
ser -u -a callitant -us t -ē Boezymi -ō
order -PFV -CYC3SG commander -NOM.SG 1SG -ACC PLACE:CYC -DAT.SG
“The commander ordered me to (go to) Boezymia.”

And thus the question becomes; where did the A-oriented and P-oriented systems come
from? The first clue becomes apparent upon an examination of morphology. Aeranir had
a robust system of morphological voice/valency-changing-operations, including a passive
voice, used to demote/delete the most nuclear argument of a verb (i.e. the subject), and a
middle voice, used to demote/delete the most oblique argument (the object or eject, depend-
ing on the transitivity of the verb). In contrast to this, languages with SAA lack inflectional
voice, and instead demote/delete arguments using paraphrases. Compare the following:

(14) a. Tīn taetuēlāre (jūcēs). Golden Age Aeranir

[ˈt ̪iːɪ ̃n̪ t ̪ɛˑt ̪ʊweˑˈɫaːr̠ɛ ˈjuːkeˑs̠]
tīn -Ø taet -u -ēlāre jūc -ēs
tea -NOM.SG drink -PFV -PSV.3SG scribe -ABL.PL
b. Çiñe-l teuçi che (o juque-e). Ilêsse
[ˈtsiɲɨl ˈtɛwtsʲ tʃɨ ʊˈʒuke]
çiñ - e =l teuç -i che o juqu - e
tea - NOM.SG = DEF.TEM.DIR.SG drink.PFV - 3SG REFL by scribe - IND.PL
=e.
=DEF.CYC.IND.PL
c. Ul ttine (ille g·giughe t)tiettàvelai. Quarenzi Iscariano
[ult ̪ˈt ̪iːne‿jlːedːˈtʃuːɡet ̪ t ̪jet ̪ˈt ̪aːveˌlaj]
ul tin - e il = l- ex giuch - ex tiet
DEF.TEM.NOM.SG tea - NOM.SG by = DEF- CYC.ABL.PL scribe - ABL.PL drink
- x àv -elai
-PFV -PSV.TEM.3SG
“The tea was drunk (by the scribes).”

As we can see, voice is marked directly on the verb in Aeranir, however in Ilêsse, it is
marked by the addition of the reflexive pronoun. Other SAA languages use different meth-
ods, for instance auxiliary verbs, however the point stands; SAA languages do not have mor-
phological voice. Contrast this with Iscariano, a Northern Band Aeranid language closely
related to Ilêsse, which preserves the Aeranir passive voice. Furthermore, in all examples,
the demoted A may be reintroduced as a non-core argument, either through an oblique case
(the ablative in Aeranir), or as a PP (as in Ilêsse). This argument may be dropped without
generating an anaphoric reading; instead it is indeterminate, as mentioned earlier. In a kind
of symmetry with the passive, Aeranir also had a middle voice (which in these situations
behaved more like a traditional antipassive voice), which could be used to delete the most

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oblique argument (the object or eject). But unlike the passive, the deleted argument of a
verb in the middle voice could not normally be reintroduced, especially in Classical Aeranir.
One common construction emerged in GAA which ‘reintroduced’ this non-core argument,
however it was somewhat semantically limited. It could only with verbs of sensation, per-
ception, or cognition, and implied that that sensation or perception was non-volitional or
non-intentional; similar to the difference between ‘to look at’ and ‘to see,’ as exemplified in
(15). The ablative is also used here to reintroduce the non-core argument.

(15) a. Ȳrēvat’ jūlian. Golden Age Aeranir

[yˑˈr̠eːʋat ̪ ˈjuːlɪjãˑ]
ȳr -ēv -a =te jūli -an
listen -PFV -CYC3SG =1SG song:CYC -ACC.SG
“I listened to a song”
b. Ȳrēvō (īcuc) jūliā
[yˑˈr̠eːʋoˑ ˈiːkʊk ˈjuːlɪjaˑ]
ȳr -ēv -ō īcuc jūli -ā
listen -PFV -MID.1SG 1SG.NOM song -ABL.SG
“I heard a song”

Note that, because jūliā is no longer a core argument in (15b), it is no longer able to licence
indexation from the verb. Instead, the subject, in this case īcuc, is indexed, as though it were
the subject of an intransitive clause, and as such, in the case of personal pronouns, it is often
dropped. If the reader is looking closely, they may begin to notice the emergence of the SAA
systems. One m-case, the nominative, is used to code the single core argument, which is
also indexed by the verb. Another m-case, the ablative, is used to mark the single non-core
argument, and is never indexed by the verb. This mirrors our direct and indirect cases nicely.
On top of that, one may observe morphological similarities between older voice markers and
the A/P-oriented systems. The suffix -l- found in (14a) and (14c) mirrors the name phoneme
found in the P-oriented system of many SAA languages; cf. Aeranir taetēlō [t ̪ɛˑˈt ̪eːɫoˑ] ‘I am
drunk’ (literally, not inebriated) with Tevrés/Murraol/Vominyà tedel [t ̪eˈð̞el/t ̪əˈðɛl/t ̪əˈdel],
Ertrañán tedelo [t ̪əˈðelʊ], S’entigneis toyil [tswɛ̀jíl], Ilêsse tetèu [t ̪ɨˈt ̪ɛw] (with regular /-
l-/ Ñ /-Ø-/) ‘(they) drink me;’ Lădes teter [t ̪eˈt ̪eɾ] (with regular /-l-/ Ñ /-r-/), Iscariano
tettelo [t ̪et ̪ˈt ̪eːlo] ‘I am drunk.’ Observe also the similarities between the middle first person
singular ending and -ō and the A-oriented first person singular marker in SAA languages;
Late Aeranir ýrio [ˈyrjo] (Ð GAA ȳreor [ˈyːr̠e.ɔr̠]) ‘I hear’ with Tev./Ert. irgo [ˈiɾɰo/ˈiɾɣʊ],
Mur. irc [ˈiɾk], Vom. ir [ˈiʀ], Sen. yr [íɐ̯] (in Vom. and Sen., final -o is lost), Ile. zero
[ˈdzɨɾʊ] ‘I hear it;’ Lad. zâr [ˈzɨɾ], Isc. ggiro [dˈdʒiːro] ‘I hear.’

Indeed, these voices do appear to be the origin of the A/P-oriented systems; the middle
voice corresponds to the A-oriented system, and the passive voice with the P-oriented system.
The indirect case arises directly from the Aeranir ablative; cf. GAA harīnā [haˈriːnaˑ] ‘priest-
ABL.SG’ with Tev. harina [aˈɾina], Ert./Mor./Vom. arina [aˈɾina/əˈɾinə/aˈɾinɔ], Sen. harine
[àˈʁín], Ile. ariña [ɐˈɾiɲɐ] ‘priest-IND.SG;’ vs. Lad. ărină [əˈɾinə], Isc. arrina [arˈriːna]
‘priest-ABL.SG.’ The direct-case of most nouns comes from the Aeranir genitive case, however
some come from the nominative; these two cases had complementary functions in GAA,
the former marking the subject in embedded clauses, and the later marking the subject in
matrix clauses, and were interchangeable in LA; GAA harīnī [haˈriːniˑ] ‘priest-GEN.SG’ with
Tev. harín [aˈɾĩn], Ert. arine [aˈɾinɪ], Mor./Vom. arì [əˈɾi/aˈɾi], Sen. harin [àˈʁɛ̃]̂ ‘priest-
DIR.SG;’ vs. Lad. ării [əˈɾij], Isc. arrini [arˈriːni] ‘priest-GEN.SG.’ The accusative case in SAA
languages has two sources as well, the Aeranir accusative and dative cases. However, unlike

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with the direct case, these two cases did not merge due to overlapping use. Instead, their
merger is purely a consequence of convergent phonological change; GAA harīnun ‘priest-
ACC.SG.’ harīnō ‘priest-DAT.SG,’ vs. Tev. harino [aˈɾino], Ert. arine [aˈɾinʊ], Mor./Vom.
arì [əˈɾi/aˈɾi], Sen. harin [àˈʁɛ̃]̂ ‘priest-ACC.SG.’ This explains the difference in ditransitive
coding between Aeranir and the SAA split-system; whilst in Aeranir T and R were marked
differently, the two merged in daughter languages. These pathways are laid out more plainly
in (16)11 .

(16) Grammaticalisation pathways for the components of SAA

nominative
Ñ direct
genitive active voice Ñ split-system
accusative middle voice Ñ A-oriented system
Ñ accusative
dative passive voice Ñ P-oriented system
ablative Ñ indirect

However, a few issues remain that prevent us from proposing a straightforward transition
between Aeranir-style alignment and SAA. First of all, we must examine the expansion of
argument reintroduction in the middle voice. How did objects come to be reintroduced in
clauses not involving verbs of sensation? Secondly, we must establish some grammatical
mechanism by which the transition may have occurred. We have identified the morpholog-
ical basis for SAA, however, we cannot yet explain how it became dependent on an animacy
hierarchy. Finally, we must explain the behavior of ditransitive verbs in SAA, which does
not follow from Aeranir. As we can see in (17), in the Aeranir passive voice, former T is
coded NOM, former R is coded ACC, former D is coded ABL, and the verb indexes R. This is
at odds with what we see in the SAA P-oriented system, which supposedly arises from the
passive voice, where T is coded ACC, R is coded DIR (Ð NOM), and D is coded IND (Ð ABL).
T and R appear to have swapped cases. Thus, there must be some other developments at
work.

(17) Zavēlā alta zillae Oscā. Golden Age Aeranir

[tsaˈʋeːɫaˑ ˈaɫt ̪a ˈtsɪllɛˑ ˈɔskaˑ]
z -av -ēlā alt -a zill -ae Osc -ā
give -PFV -PSV.3PL water -NOM.SG cat -ACC.PL NAME -ABL.SG
“The water was given to the cats by Oscus.”

In order to answer the first two questions, we may turn to LA, as well as early attesta-
tions of South Aeranid. By the end of the Empire, we can see that argument reintroduction
in the middle voice had expanded past its original purview, modelled after reintroduction
with verbs of sensation (18a). Such formations are generally found with animate subjects
of high social status, and predominantly in official reports, with some samples in directly
quoted speech. It is widely accepted that this represented a form of politeness, specifically
referent-oriented negative politeness (Brown & Levinson, 1987; Brown, 2015). Breaking
that down; referent politeness is polite language targeted not necessarily at the hearer or
addressee, but rather to a third party who is mentioned in the sentence (although this may
also be the addressee), and negative politeness is a kind of politeness which seeks to min-
imise imposition or assumption, as to not impede one’s freedom of action. We theorise that
11
The origin of the Ilêsse case system differ slightly, having early developments outside of the SAS, however
it was later adapted to fit within the SAA model.

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the original non-volitional sensation formation with the middle voice lowered the agency
and involvement of the subject, and thus was adapted as a form of negative politeness to do
the same towards high-status referents. Lower involvement here equates to less hindrance
of the referent’s will or desire. This method of negative politeness persists into Iscariano
(18b).

(18) a. ...ecce ūle zux praeppērre lēctōs sartōs cī exūticārōvus. Late Aeranir
[ˈekke uleˈtsuks̠ prepˈper̠re̠ ˈɫekt ̪os̠ ˈs̠ar̠t ̪os ci eks̠ut ̪ekaˈr̠oːs̠]
ecce ūl - e zuc -s praeppēr - re lēct
and DEF - TEM.NOM.SG general - NOM.SG take.PFV - MID.3SG all
-ōs sart -ōs c -ī exūticār -ōvus
-TEM.ABL.PL sword -ABL.PL REFL -GEN.SG enemy -GEN.PL
“...and the general took all their enemies’ swords.”
b. La tuggia mmoma ucciangiara zucele ppertlagne. Iscariano
[la ˈt ̪uddʒa mˈmoːma uttʃanˈdʒaːra tsuˈtʃɛːlep perˈtɬaɲɲe]
l -a tuggi - a mmom -a ucciangi
DEF - CYC.NOM.SG my - CYC.NOM.SG mom:CYC - NOM.SG cook
-ara zucell -ex pertlagn -ex
-MID.CYC3SG FOOD -ABL.PL best -CYC.ABL.PL
“My mother makes the best zucelle.”

A similar yet somewhat inverted development may be observed in the evolution of the
passive voice to the P-oriented system. It too came to be used to mark referent politeness,
however applied to the object, not the subject. Furthermore, the passive was used to project
positive politeness, instead of negative politeness. This type of politeness seeks to elevate
and show interest in or reverence for the referent, and it appears the passive voice, centering
high-status semantic objects, was able to achieve this. This also likely overlapped with
trends towards topicalisation of high-status referents. Over time, the passive became the
preferred polite form for addressing high-status semantic objects, and the same time, the
semantic subject (the demoted non-core argument) began to ‘reassert’ its subjectivity, that
is, its nature as an external argument (Kratzer, 1998), perhaps as a consequence of imperfect
learning (Kiparsky, 2008), where aspects of the grammar are based on incomplete set of data,
or different analysis of ambiguous output, at an early stage in acquisition, and carried over
into the final system. There is evidence, as exemplified in (19)12 , that in the earliest stages
of South Aeranid, this realignment was completed, and the former non-core argument A
was reincorporated into the syntactic structure as the subject, as evidenced by its ability to
command reflexives.

(19) *Reles irala jus ci monneros. Early South Aeranid

[ˈr̠ɛːles̠ iˈr̠aːla ˈdʒus̠ tsimoˈɲeːr̠os̠]
rel -es ir -ala jus c -i monner -os
child -ABL.PL listen -PSV.SBJV.3PL well REFL -GEN parent -GEN.PL
“Children ought to listen well to their parents.”
?lit. “Theiri parents ought to be listened to by childreni .”
12
An asterisk is placed before the pronunciation of 19, as the sentence is an attested inscription, but the
pronunciation is properly unknown, and based on reconstruction.

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 South Aeranid

As the semantic subject is reconstituted as the syntactic subject, we begin to see the ablative
case in these situations behave more like an ergative case, and in turn, more like the indirect
case. One key indicator of this is the suppletion of personal pronoun forms when ABL/IND
encodes A. As Kiparsky observes (2008), ergative cases are generally applied to nouns/NPs,
and not determiners/DPs. Therefore, in SAA, personal pronouns, which act as determiners,
cannot be encoded IND in the P-oriented system, so suppletive forms derived from nouns
and which function syntactically as nouns are used in their stead. For instance, in the open
text of this paper (1), the subject of the second clause is ziem ‘they.TEM.IND.PL,’ rather than
the usual indirect temporary third person pronoun llos (which does encode the object in
the A-oriented system). The latter is derived from the Aeranir determiner ūle, whereas the
former comes via the noun cemos ‘people, population.’

Thus, we more closely begin to approach SAA. However, notably absent from the exam-
ples given so far are personal pronouns, or SAPs. Within the corpus available, we do find
numerous examples of the middle and passive voices being used to show politeness towards
second person arguments, which is somewhat expected, as speech partners are one of the
primary targets of politeness, however, we never find the same treatment for first person
arguments. This is also to be expected, as no form of politeness or respectful language in-
volves promoting the importance of the speaker. Thus, we return to the problem of how the
Aeranid voice system transitioned from a politeness marking strategy to the animacy based
alignment system called SAA. It is possible that this represents a case of imperfect learning,
as mentioned above. Because high-status referents, those towards whom politeness is most
likely to be displayed, including the second person, are so high on the animacy hierarchy,
learners may have confused the motivation behind the use of the passive and middle, be-
lieving them to be tied to animacy rather than politeness. Working under this assumption,
they began to apply these voices to the first person above all others as a kind of analogi-
cal innovation. Over times, the type of arguments eligible for elevated marking began to
dwindle, until only SAPs continued to trigger these voice changes. Finally, the passive and
middle voices atrophied as productive inflectional devices elsewhere, and SAA was born.

The dative shift which occurs for T-SAP likewise appears to be an innovation, rather than
inherited from the structure of Aeranir, likely motivated by the heightening of the SAP
constraints and pragmatic marking issues discussed in the previous section. The demand
that SAP arguments be coded DIR and indexed on the verb when in the role of A or P (or
D or R, which are essentially extended A and P respectively), was extended by analogy to
T, and the constraints present in the grammar produced a dative shift, which demoted R.
The strange behavior exhibited around infinitives, however, is at least partially inherited;
the law of infinite gravity was present in Aeranir. Aeranir verbs always agreed with the
most oblique grammatical function available, and content clauses, which were viewed as
maximally semantically oblique, yet somewhat thematically ambiguous, always occupied
that spot. Like with T-SAP, this was not a problem, until SAP constraints became higher
ranking. However, likely because the law of infinite gravity predated SAP constraints and
was highly salient in the minds of SAS speakers, it was the subject that was removed, rather
than the complement.

Conclusion
This paper by no means addresses all the complexity and oddity associated with SAA.
Phenomena such as unergative and unaccusative verbs, as well as complex predicates, add
further twists and developments to the system, which have been avoided here for the sake of
brevity. However, it is our hope that this paper has laid out the core of what makes up SAA
from a mechanical and synchronic standpoint, as well as a diachronic explanation for how

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such an unusual system may have arisen. In short, SAA is the consequence of an animacy
hierarchy which seeks to privilege SAP arguments over all others, using m-case marking
and verbal indexation, as well as an obliqueness hierarchy, which seeks to privilege both
nuclear and oblique arguments. Due to this, a three way split in transitive alignment can be
observed, depending on the presence of SAPs and their roles. This peculiar system arose due
to the collapse of the Aeranir voice system, through a middle stage focusing on politeness.
Such a system, which is unattested at a fundamental level on our own plane, may offer spe-
cial insights into the minute cognitive difference between the inhabitants of different planes
(Lucretia, 5781). In closing, we provide a morphological overview of the evolution described
thus far. Table 11 shows the middle, passive, and active personal endings in Aeranir, and
how they have evolved into the A-oriented, P-oriented, and split-systems in Aeranir13 . This
table in a way acts as a reminder that morphological categories are not disconnected from
each other. Although this article is ostensibly focused on verbs, an understanding of these
endings cannot be achieved without an examination of nouns and the role of noun case. SAA
demonstrates the interconnectedness and interdependence of grammar, in a way as elegant
as it is complex.

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Archangeli, D. B. (1999). Introducing Optimality Theory. Annual Review of Anthropology

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Bobaljik, J. D. (2007). Where’s phi? Agreement as a post-syntactic operation. https:

//ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/000529.

Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1987). Studies in interactional sociolinguistics, 4.Politeness:

Some universals in language usage. Cambridge University Press.

Brown, L. (2015). Honorifics and Politeness. In The Handbook of Korean Linguistics (eds
13
Here, § represents the personal form used for intransitive predicates. Note that only S’entigneis has a
full range of special endings for intransitive SAPs, other languages make use of some intransitive endings, but
supplement them with A or P-oriented endings where unavailable; for example, Tevrés has intransitive llavás
‘you laugh’ with the A-oriented transitive ending, but llavais ‘y’all laugh’ with the intransitive ending.

GAA LA Sen. Mur. Vom. Ert. Tev. Ile.

-or [ɔr̠] *[o] Ø Ø Ø [ʊ] [o] [ʊ] -1SG.A
-āstī [ˈaːs̠t ̪iˑ] *[ˈas̠t ̪i] [ɛ́] [ˈast ̪] [ˈas] [ˈast ̪ɪ] [ˈas] [ˈaʃtʲ] -2SG.A
-ālor [ˈaːɫɔr̠] *[ˈaːlo] [ɛ́l] [ˈaɫ] [ˈal] [ˈalʊ] [ˈal] [ˈao̯] -1SG.P
-ālāstī [aˑˈɫaːs̠t ̪iˑ] *[aˈlas̠t ̪i] [ɛ̀l] [ˈaɫəst ̪] [ˈalɔs] [ˈalast ̪ɪ] [ˈalas] [ˈɐʃtʲ] -2SG.P
-az [aˑts] *[at ̪] [˥] — — — — — -1SG.§
-an [ãˑ] *[a] [˩˥] — — — — — -2SG.§
-ās [aˑs̠] *[as̠] [˩] [əs] [ɔs] [as] [as] [ɨ] -TEM3SG
-ā [aˑ] *[a] [˩˥] [ə] [ɔ] [a] [a] [ɐ] -CYC3SG
-āmur [ˈaːmʊr̠] *[ˈaːmʊ] [ɛ̃]̂ [ˈam] [ˈan] [ˈamʊ] [ˈãm] [ˈɨmʷ] -1PL.A
-ātur [ˈaːt ̪ʊr̠] *[ˈaːt ̪ʊ] [ê] [ˈat ̪] [ˈac] [ˈaðʊ] [ˈað̞] [ˈatʷ] -2PL.A
-ālāmur [aˑˈɫaːmʊr̠] *[aˈlaːmʊ] [ɛ̀lɛ̃]̂ [ˈaɫəm] [ˈalɔn] [ˈalamʊ] [ˈalãm] [ˈɐmʷ] -1PL.P
-ālātur [aˑˈɫaːt ̪ʊr̠] *[aˈlaːt ̪ʊ] [ɛ̀lê] [ˈaɫət ̪] [ˈalɔc] [ˈalaðʊ] [ˈalað̞] [ˈɐtʷ] -2PL.P
-āmus [ˈaːmʊs̠] *[ˈaːmʊs̠] [ɛ̃]̀ — — [ˈamʊs] [ˈamos] [ˈɨmɨ] -1PL.§
-ātis [ˈaːt ̪ɪs̠] *[ˈaːt ̪es̠] [è] [ˈaw] [ˈats] [ˈaðɪs] [ˈajs] [ˈatsʲ] -2PL.§
-anz [ãnts] *[ãn̪t ̪] [˩˥] [ən] [ɔn] [an] [ãn] [ɐ̃] -3PL

Table 11: Comparison of Aeranir verb endings in its descendants

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 South Aeranid

L. Brown and J. Yeon). https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118371008.ch17.

Creissels, D. (2018). Chapter 2. The Obligatory Coding Principle in diachronic perspective.

In: Cristofaro S., Zúñiga F. (eds) Typological Hierarchies in Synchrony and Diachrony, 59-
110. John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.121.

Haspelmath, M. (2011). On S, A, P, T, and R as comparative concepts for alignment

typology. , 15(3), 535-567. https://doi.org/10.1515/LITY.2011.035

Haspelmath, M. (2013). Argument indexing: a conceptual framework for the syntactic

status of bound person forms. In D. Bakker & M. Haspelmath (Ed.), Languages Across
Boundaries (pp. 197-226). Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton. https://doi.org/10.
1515/9783110331127.197

Kiparsky, P. (2008). Universals Constrain Change; Change Results in Typological Gener-

alizations. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199298495.003.0002.

Kratzer A. (1996) Severing the External Argument from its Verb. In: Rooryck J., Zaring L.
(eds) Phrase Structure and the Lexicon. Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory,
vol 33. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8617-7_5

Larson, R. (1988). On the Double Object Construction. Linguistic Inquiry, 19(3), 335-391.
Retrieved May 22, 2021, from https://http://www.jstor.org/stable/25164901

Legendre, G. (2001). An introduction to optimality theory in syntax. In: Legendre G.,

Grimshaw J., Vikner S. (eds) Optimality-Theoretic Syntax. The MIT Press.

Lucretia. (5781). Multi-universal grammars: a response to Chomsky. Neverwinter, De-

partment of Interdimensional Wumbology Press.

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 12 Verbal Agreement in Žskđ

by Formor Immington

A unique gender­based system

Žskđ, also romanized as Zhisketh, is a conlang I began following the 7th Language Cre-
ation Conference in 2017 that was originally meant to break some of the typological rules
that most languages tend to follow. The best fleshed-out dialect, notable for lacking vowel
phonemes, is spoken by a nomadic group dwelling throughout the Birch Forest. Another
unique aspect, found in all lects of the language, is its verbal agreement system.

Noun Classes and Morphology

Žskđ has two noun classes or grammatical genders, referred to as masculine and feminine
since they reflect the natural sex or perceived gender of their human and animal refer-
ents. Mixed-gender groups are marked as morphologically masculine on the noun (see (1)).
Grammatical gender of inanimates is generally random, though there are some trends, such
as conifers being feminine and angiosperms being masculine, as well as feminine diminu-
tives derived from masculine nouns (see (2)). All derived nouns except feminine substantive
participles are masculine as well.

(1) ̓ mʀ kzccð xŋz.

zžt kzc vžlt, kzcð štnz
zžt kzc - s -∅ vžl - t, kzc - s -ð štn̓ - z mʀ kzc
1.SG.ERG deer - M.ABS - TRI see - N.PST deer - M.ABS - TRN two - ABS and deer
-c -ð xŋ -z
-F.ABS -TRN one -ABS
“I saw three deer: two bucks and one doe.”

(2) zžt pfʀžð xrkčð mlkcð fkfr.

zžt pfʀž -š -ð xrk -č -ð mlk -c -ð fkf -r
1.SG.ERG birch -M.GEN -TRN wood -F.GEN -TRN bowl -F.ABS -TRN make -F.PST
“I made a ladle (lit. ‘little bowl’) of birch wood.”

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 Žskđ

Prototypically, a feminine noun is formed by adding the suffix -t to the noun stem, but in
practice this is often manifested as the case suffix turning from a fricative to an affricate.

Basic Verbal Morphology

Indicative verbs are conjugated for tense, past and present, and to agree with gender but
not person. Periphrastic perfect and irrealis constructions use a copula inflected to agree
in the same way (see (5)); the jussive aspect is the only TAM category that does not have
different forms to agree with noun class. The suffixes consist of one consonant each and
are quite regular, with manner of articulation indicating gender and place of articulation
indicating tense.

Masculine Feminine Neuter

Present -ŋ -ʀ -k
Past -n -r -t

In the case of groups of inanimate nouns or same-gender groups, agreement is somewhat

straightforward: the verb agrees with the gender of the absolutive argument (see (3)). How-
ever, there is a third agreement class of suffixes besides the masculine and feminine, called
the neuter by convention, that does not correspond to any noun class, which complicates
things somewhat.

(3) ʔnč tŋtŋð znvcð mʀðpðr.

ʔnč tŋtŋ -∅ -ð znv -c -ð mʀð -pð -r
1.SG.GEN father -M.ERG -TRN pine -F.ABS -TRN cut -down -F.PST
“My father cut down pine trees.”

Uses of the Neuter Agreement Affixes

The neuter agreement affixes are used for: groups of mixed natural gender or noun class,
as seen in example (1); for groups of three (in less formal language, a few) things without
natural gender, marked with trial number, as seen in example (4); and for complement
clauses: they are treated as an argument of the sentence, so when the complementizer is in
the absolutive as seen in example (5), the agreement suffix is neuter. I also use the neuter
to agree with real-world people who are not comfortable with being referred to using a
morphological masculine nor feminine.

(4) ̓ xnct.
čvc kv
čv -c -∅ ̓
kv xnc -t
door -F.ABS -TRI 3.PL.DAT open -N.PST
“Three doors (were) open(ed) for them.”

(5) ̓ zr-krnvzr, kvt

vs kzt ̓ zžt tlžt.
̓
v -s ̓
kzt zr= krnvz -r, ̓
kvt zžt ̓ -t
tlž
C -ABS 3.SG.ABS be.F.PST= elect -F.PST 3.SG.DAT 1.SG.ERG tell -N.PST
“I told her that she’d been promoted.”

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Discussion
Aside from the unique usage shown in example 6, the usage of the neuter agreement on
the verb represents all usages that can be thought of as “default” or requiring “resolution,”
as described in Corbett 2007. While most languages end up needing to use some existing
noun class to refer to these anomalous cases, Žskđ is unique in having a special agreement
category for such cases that matches up to no particular class assigned to nouns.

However, it is much like other languages in that the least marked noun class, in its case the
masculine, is used on nouns in such anomalous situations, as seen in example (1): kzc-s-∅
in the first clause is morphologically masculine, even though we see in the next clause that
it refers to two males and one female.

The origin of the “neuter” agreement, and by extension the noun class agreement system
in general, is unclear. It is unlikely that the neuter suffixes ever corresponded to a specific
noun class, as it would theoretically be overtly marked like the feminine. A more likely
explanation is that the “neuter” originally indexed the trial number, while the other two
indexed transnumeral number and noun class, resulting in a system described the chart
below:

Masculine Feminine
Transnumeral -ŋ, -n -ʀ, -r
Trial -k, -t

This would explain another oddity of Žskđ: since the “neuter” suffixes can agree with
mixed-gender groups of either grammatical number, none of the agreement suffixes specif-
ically index number, violating Greenberg’s linguistic universal no. 32, which states that
“Whenever the verb agrees with a nominal subject or nominal object in gender, it also agrees
in number” (Greenberg 1963). A stage of the language preceding the stage analyzed, where
the “neuter” suffixes were only used for trial nouns and not the other usages examined here,
would explain how Žskđ came to violate universal no. 32.

References
Corbett, G. G. (2007). Gender and noun classes. In T. Shopen (ed.), Language Typology
and Syntactic Description (2nd ed., Vol. 3, pp. 241-280). Cambridge University Press.

Greenberg, J. (1963). Some Universals of Grammar with Particular Reference to the Order
of Meaningful Elements. In J.Greenberg (ed.), Universals of Language (73-113). MIT Press.

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 Verbs and Verbal Con­
13 structions In Akhazad

by Anvelt Koidula

Verbs and converbs of the Akhazad

Introduction
Akhazad is the language of a paternalistic agricultural society still carrying the traces of
a matriarchal era in its culture, the Khazud people. It is a widely spoken language with
many dialects, but I will mainly focus on the written prestige dialect for the course of this
article. Its notable features include a vowel harmony system between two front and two
back vowels which are phonemically just the long and short(now that the short ones shifted
to close vowels and long ones lost the length, are called plain and breve vowels respectively),
a grammar depending heavily on agglutination mainly in the form of prefixes and transfixes
which are superimposed on triconsonantal roots, a seximal number system and still visible
traces of an isolational past. Each triconsonantal root is also tied in with a vowel harmony
class, so these roots are expressed as V-CCC. For example a-khzd and e-khzd are different
roots, with different meanings.

Verbal constructions, as expected, also use these methods heavily. The making of converbs
and negation is expressed via prefixes. Triconsonantal roots take transfixes for expressing
number, person, voice, tense, mood and aspect. These conjugated verbs in turn can be
negated and made into converbs with prefixes. In this article, I want to look more into the
rules and patterns behind these conjugations and their historical origin.

Use of transfixes
So I am aware these are very big tables which honestly do not tell a lot, but I’ll clarify what
they mean now. So a “B” stands for a breve vowel (/a e/ but surfaces as [ɯ i]. ɯ is also
<u>.) and a “P” is a plain vowel (/aː eː/ but they surface as [ɑ e]). A “C” is, as expected,
a consonant. It shows where do the parts of triconsonantal roots show up in transfix. Other
consonants are predetermined.

Origin of the actual transfixes, which is all of them barring the person indicators at the end

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 Akhazad

Realis Verbs past perfect past imperfect habitual present future

active PCCPCPs PCCBCPs PCCPCBs PCCPCPn PCCBCPn
SG
passive PCCPCPsB PCCBCPsB PCCPCBsB PCCPCPnB PCCBCPnB
active PCCPCPsPg PCCBCPsPg PCCPCBsPg PCCPCPg PCCBCPg
1st DU
passive PCCPCPsBg PCCBCPsBg PCCPCBsBg PCCPCPgB PCCBCPgB
active PCCPCPsPd PCCBCPsPd PCCPCBsPd PCCPCPd PCCBCPd
PL
passive PCCPCPsBd PCCBCPsBd PCCPCBsBd PCCPCPdB PCCBCPdB
active PCCPCPh PCCBCPh PCCPCBh PCCPCPnPh PCCBCPnPh
SG
passive PCCPCPhB PCCBCPhB PCCPCBhB PCCPCPnBh PCCBCPnBh
active PCCPCPhPg PCCBCPhPg PCCPCBhPg PCCPCgPh PCCBCPgPh
2nd DU
passive PCCPCPhBg PCCBCPhBg PCCPCBhBg PCCPCPgBh PCCBCPgBh
active PCCPCPhPd PCCBCPhPd PCCPCBhPd PCCPCPdPh PCCBCPdPh
PL
passive PCCPCPhBd PCCBCPhBd PCCPCBhBd PCCPCPdBh PCCBCPdBh
active PCCPCPkh PCCBCPkh PCCPCBkh PCCPCPnPkh PCCBCPnPkh
SG
passive PCCPCPkhB PCCBCPkhB PCCPCBkhB PCCPCPnBkh PCCBCPnBkh
active PCCPCPkhPg PCCBCPkhPg PCCPCBkhPg PCCPCPgPkh PCCBCPgPkh
3rd DU
passive PCCPCPkhBg PCCBCPkhBg PCCPCBkhBg PCCPCPgBkh PCCBCPgBkh
active PCCPCPkhPd PCCBCPkhPd PCCPCBkhPd PCCPCPdPkh PCCBCPdPkh
PL
passive PCCPCPkhBd PCCBCPkhBd PCCPCBkhBd PCCPCPdBkh PCCBCPdBkh

Irrealis Verbs past perfect past imperfect habitual present future

active BCCPCPs BCCBCPs BCCPCBs BCCPCPn BCCBCPn
SG
passive BCCPCPsB BCCBCPsB BCCPCBsB BCCPCPnB BCCBCPnB
active BCCPCPsPg BCCBCPsPg BCCPCBsPg BCCPCPg BCCBCPg
1st DU
passive BCCPCPsBg BCCBCPsBg BCCPCBsBg BCCPCPgB BCCBCPgB
active BCCPCPsPd BCCBCPsPd BCCPCBsPd BCCPCPd BCCBCPd
PL
passive BCCPCPsBd BCCBCPsBd BCCPCBsBd BCCPCPdB BCCBCPdB
active BCCPCPh BCCBCPh BCCPCBh BCCPCPnPh BCCBCPnPh
SG
passive BCCPCPhB BCCBCPhB BCCPCBhB BCCPCPnBh BCCBCPnBh
active BCCPCPhPg BCCBCPhPg BCCPCBhPg BCCPCgPh BCCBCPgPh
2nd DU
passive BCCPCPhBg BCCBCPhBg BCCPCBhBg BCCPCPgBh BCCBCPgBh
active BCCPCPhPd BCCBCPhPd BCCPCBhPd BCCPCPdPh BCCBCPdPh
PL
passive BCCPCPhBd BCCBCPhBd BCCPCBhBd BCCPCPdBh BCCBCPdBh
active BCCPCPkh BCCBCPkh BCCPCBkh BCCPCPnPkh BCCBCPnPkh
SG
passive BCCPCPkhB BCCBCPkhB BCCPCBkhB BCCPCPnBkh BCCBCPnBkh
active BCCPCPkhPg BCCBCPkhPg BCCPCBkhPg BCCPCPgPkh BCCBCPgPkh
3rd DU
passive BCCPCPkhBg BCCBCPkhBg BCCPCBkhBg BCCPCPgBkh BCCBCPgBkh
active BCCPCPkhPd BCCBCPkhPd BCCPCBkhPd BCCPCPdPkh BCCBCPdPkh
PL
passive BCCPCPkhBd BCCBCPkhBd BCCPCBkhBd BCCPCPdBkh BCCBCPdBkh

Impero-Volative Verbs past present future

1st BCCPCP PCCPCP PCCBCP
2nd BCCPC PCCPC PCCBC
3rd BCCPCPy PCCPCPy PCCBCPy

which are more like suffixes, happened via mingling of various circumfixes, infixes, suffixes
and prefixes. Person indicators are newly bound morphemes subjected to vowel harmony,
which were originally separate from the word. They share the phonemes with personal
pronouns they originated from.

Akhazad also has gerundive forms which are pCpCpC for singular, pCbCpC for dual and
pCbCbC for plural. The word Akhazad, name of the language herself, is just the root a-khzd
in a singular gerundive form, meaning ‘act of speaking, speech” and by extension ‘language.’

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 The language has tense and aspect intertwined to the point native Akhazud grammaticians
consider them to be one thing, but it originally had a perfective and an imperfective aspect
and a three tense system of past, present and future. Later, future continous fell out of use. It
also has three moods: a realis mood, an irrealis mood and a mood I call an impero-volative.

Realis
Realis mood is pretty straight forward. It has a past perfective which is used for actions
and events at the past that were more immediate-one time happenings.

(1) Zegeret aryatas, hah zasagar nanaryatas.

ze - geret aryatas hah za - sagar nan -
ACC - guard.GER injure.1.SG.PST.PFV but ACC - represent.GER NEG -
aryatas
injure.1.SG.PST.PFV
“I shot the sheriff, but I did not shoot the deputy.”

Its past imperfective is used for past habitual contexts and former facts(i.e. historical
situations that are no longer present) too, and it implies some event went on for a duration
in the past.

(2) Eyekey zasan sar rasan anarud eheset aynukas.

eyekey za- san sar ra- san anarud eheset aynukas.
to.be.alone.GER ACC- 1.SG for GEN- 1.SG whole life follow.1.SG.PST.IPFV
“Loneliness has followed me my whole life.””

Habitual is used for, well, habits, stuff people got used to, general facts.

(3) Luka, san reseg harakh ehsetis.

Luka san re- seg harakh ehsetis.
Luke 1.SG GEN- 2.SG father be.1.SG.HAB
“Luke, I am your father.”

Present is used for present time, also sometimes in place of future continuous which was
lost. In those cases it generally gets combined with an adverbial or such indicating time.

(4) Lahat neseneg alhatanakh, ya eseneg zakhan nanankharakh.

lahat ne - seneg alhatanakh ya eseneg za - khan nan -
light DAT - dark shine.3.SG.PRS and darkness ACC - 3.SG NEG -
ankharakh.
digest.3.SG.PST.PFV
“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

Future tense is used for events that will happen in the future.

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 Akhazad

(5) Zeyezde enninenekh, ya heneyed Yesiye enyid.

ze- yezde enninenekh ya he- neyed Yesiye enyid
ACC- son give.fruit.3.SG.FUT and INSTR- name Jesus name.2.SG.IMPPLTE
“She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus.”

Irrealis
Irrealis mood is actually only morphologically an irrealis. Syntactically, its combinations
with tenses (and aspects, but I will omit that part from now on since they’re intertwined
anyway) now convey meanings of various moods used for various situations.

The morphological past imperfective irrealis is semantically a conditional mood, express-

ing conditions for some other action to happen. Morphological past perfective irrealis is a
subjunctive mood, which is used to talk about hypothetical events, hypothetical results of
other events, and a bunch of idiomatic uses.

(6) An zahan agalud irleyes, zasan anakur irliyes.

An za- han agalud irleyes za- san anakur irliyes.
if ACC- 2.SG ever lose.1.SG.COND ACC- 1.SG definitely lose.1.SG.SBJV
“If I ever were to lose you, I’d surely lose myself.”

Habitual irrealis is potential mood expressing someone is capable permitted of doing an

action.

(7) Ankaran zitnehis.

ankaran z(e)- itnehis
believe.1.SG.PRS ACC- fly.1.SG.POT
“I believe I can fly.”

Present irrealis is an interrogative mood, used to ask yes and no questions, also in formal
speech used together with the question words. In informal speech, just the indicated tenses
are used with question words.

(8) Sanad tarannu iktekenekh?

sanad ta- rannu iktekenekh
bear ALL- forest.PL defecate.3.SG.Q
“Does a bear poop in the woods?”

Future irrealis is a potential-hypothetical mood, used when some action has a chance to
happen.

(9) Azunan zasan askhuganah, san isgilen.

azunan za- san askhuganah san isgilen
next ACC- 1.SG see.2.SG.FUT 1.SG smile.1.SG.HYP
“Next time you see me, I may be smiling.”

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 Impero­volative
The last mood is impero-volative. None of its forms distinguish for number, and it doesn’t
have an imperfective/perfective distinction too. So it has only three persons and three
tenses. Its past tense is used for optative mood, used to express hopes and wishes.

(10) Ihset azanun!

ihset azanun
live.2.OPT long
“May you live long! (It is an Akhazud phrase used when hitting the glasses)”

It’s present is for strong imperative, which may come off as rude if used against someone
deemed socially superior, as my languages have a fair share of honorific structures.

(11) Zasan rike nanadrak!

za- san r(e)- ike nan- adrak
ACC- 1.SG PROX- when NEG- stop.2.IMP.GNR
“Don’t stop me now!”

Its future conjugations are used for a more polite imperative, a wish from someone if you
will.

(12) Rasan zeyezde ahrukh!

ra- san ze- yezde ahrukh
GEN- 1.SG ACC- child save.2.IMP.POL
“Please save my child!”

Voice, person and number marking

As you can see, Akhazad also marks person on verbs. One thing that should be of note
here is dual is more polite than singular, and more intimate than plural. You would refer
to a liege, or a high priest with plural conjugations, a teacher or a senior family member
with dual ones and your friend or little brother with singular ones. Dual is used for pairs
and couples doing stuff otherwise. Most clothing items’ nouns are in dual number and verbs
in those sentences are also so. Also semantically plural but structurally singular words like
‘army’ or ‘forest’ don’t really exist in Akhazad and are covered with both structurally and
semantically plural versions of words ‘soldier’ and ‘tree.’ So, they take plural numbers on
their verbs too.

Voice distinction of Akhazad is two-way. There is an active, and a passive. Passive is used
for natural events like weather and sea happenings, when it is unclear or not stated who
did the verb and when the agent of the verb is the same as the patient. In all other cases an
active voice is used.

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 Akhazad

Use of prefixes
Akhazad isn’t quite unusual with any part of its verbal system, but I’d say overall the
converb system is spicier. There is also negation, which I will touch on briefly because it is
quite simple. Negation is done with a nPn- suffix (P being a plain vowel again) for singular
verbs and a nBn- suffix (with a breve vowel) for dual and plural verbs.

Converbs
The converb system arose when Akhazud people started to use noun case prefixes also
before conjugated verbs. Note the vowel parts of these prefixes are instead a stress shift and
length change when the stem starts with a vowel. Akhazad cases are something like this:

Cases Genitive Accusative Dative Lative Ablative Instrumental Causal

Singular rP- nP- tP-
zP- gP-
Dual hP- yPt-
rB- nB- tB-
Plural zB- gB-

Dative is a synchronic, causal is resultative, ablative is successive, allative is predecessive,

accusative is gerundive, instrumental is synchronic for larger time spans instead of moments,
genitive is used to mark verb clauses in a similar way to English ‘that.’ These cases-converbial
markers can be used with verbs combined with any tense-aspect-mood combination.

Genitive is pretty straight forward, it marks verb clauses as the subject of the sentence.
Accusative marks them, instead as the object of a sentence. Also accusative, when used
together with present tense third person of the impero-volative serves as gerundive form of
the word and it is called infinitive.

(13) Renzileh irliyekhi zekhniyehi.

r(e)- enzileh irliyekhi z(e)- ekhniyehi
GEN- do.2.SG.PST.IPFV lose.SBJV.3.SG.PSV ACC- oblige.2.SG.PST.IPFV.PSV
“All your deeds in past could have been lost to things you were obliged to do.”

Dative and instrumental are similar in they both express that verb clause is happening as
the same time as main verb of the sentence but there is a distinction. Dative is used for
instant things, so once the verbal clause verb happens the main verb happens immediately.
It is used for prophecies and certain statements because of this. Instrumental expresses more
of a process. It expresses that verbal clause will happen for a time span which covers the
time/time span the main verb happens.

Causal is a resultative. It is used to express that main verb happened as a result of the verbal
clause happening. Other two cases, lative and ablative are used to express the relative time
of verbal clause in comparison to main verb. Lative expresses the verbal clause happened
before main verb did, and ablative expresses it happened after the main verb did.

A few last words

The actual thing which allows these converbs to cover a larger range of meaning is that they
can be used in combination with any moods and so on. So you can give sequential orders
with a locational case converb and imperative mood’s present, or you can express something
like ‘not before you would get spoken to’ with a negative lative converb in combination with an

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irrealis past perfective passive. Combinations of these kind allow verbal clauses and verbal
expressions to carry a lot more information.

I am sorry I didn’t have more cultural phrases and idioms as examples, but I really didn’t
work on the Akhazud culture yet. So this is all I have to tell so far about Akhazad language
verbs. If you have questions or suggestions I’m always interested to hear!

Discord: Anvelt Koidula#5258 | Reddit: u/SukhbaatarynTug

Page 129
 14 The Flow of Mercury

by Miss Merlin Monroe

Applications of the Dependent Mood in POST

In addition to polarity, tense, a direct-inverse distinction, and transitivity, verbs in my per-

sonal artlang, POST (Polysynthesis, Omnipredication, Semitic Roots, Tone), can be marked
for one of two moods: Independent (also known as Sulphuric), used for the main verb of
clauses; and Dependent (also known as Mercurial) which is used for all dependent clauses.
Because all semantic roots in POST are verbal in nature, any nouns, adjectives, and adverbs
must be expressed as dependent clauses. This article aims to explore all of the above ap-
plications of the Mercurial in the language. POST also features infinitive and conjunctive
constructions, which are considered Mercurial, and will thus also be discussed below.

Formation of Nouns
POST forms nouns by putting a consonantal root into the dependent mood, then adding
one of eight nominalization prefixes. As an example, let’s take the root (also known as a
Salt) -ñ-ñ-m- (<ñ> represents the palatal nasal phoneme /ɲ/), meaning ‘to eat or drink,’
and use it to form a noun referring to that which is eaten (i.e. ‘food’). The process begins by
applying a direct, passive, affirmative, present tense dependent conjugation (i.e. one that
means ‘that is X’ed’). While Sulphuric conjugations often follow the pattern of CVCVCV,
Mercurial ones generally follow the pattern VCVCVC. The conjugation that matches the pre-
vious description is á1ií2a3 (a vowel with an acute diacritic carries a high tone; any vowel
repeated orthographically is long.) Applied to the root, we form a new word, áñiíñam.

This is a complete verb form in POST, and could very well be used as a relative clause
as well (more on that below), but it still needs a nominalizing prefix (hereafter called a
coagulant) to become a noun (Suplhuric forms cannot take a nominalizer). Because most
food is solid, it isn’t unreasonable to use the coagulant for solid objects, i- (pronounced /j/).
Applied to the dependent clause we created earlier, we now have a new word, iáñiíñam
(IPA: [ja˦.ɲɪː˨˦.ɲam˨]), meaning ‘solid object(s) which is/are eaten’ (grammatical number is
not marked in POST, except for in personal pronouns). A suitable word for food, I would
say, if not a little uncreative.

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I feel I should take some time to explain some of the design philosophy behind POST, in
order to give some insight as to why it seems so roundabout and vague. POST was designed
to be a language that deprioritizes “objective reality” to focus on the subjective experience of
the speaker. It focuses not so much on what things are as much as their impact on the world
of the speaker. Indeed, any infinite number of words could be formed to mean ‘food.’ ‘That
which nourishes,’ ‘that which brings (people) together,’ and ‘that which continues a tormented
existence’ could all be literal translations for different words for ‘food,’ depending on the
speaker. ‘That which is eaten’ is a comparatively bland construction for ‘food.’ Deliberately
so, in fact, as it is meant to show my desire to explain a grammatical feature of POST to
the reader of this article as simply as possible. In other words, POST’s lack of “words” in an
Englishy sense is meant to make the subtext of natural languages into the surface-level text
of POST.

Mercurial Forms as Relative Clauses and Adverbs

As explained above, once a Mercurial conjugation is applied to a Salt, the resulting word
can be used to modify noun phrases, verb phrases, and even to other Mercurial forms. For
this example, a new word, óbuúwøñ, (POST’s <ø> is pronounced slightly lower than the
IPA’s, as is its <o>), meaning ‘fattening’ (or ‘makes [one] bigger,’ more literally) will be
joining us.

Any Mercurial modifying a Sulphuric or a coagulated Mercurial must follow the modified
word. For example, iáñiíñam óbuúwøñ means ‘fattening food.’ *óbuúwøñ iáñiíñam is
ungrammatical. This is in contrast to Sulphuric verbs, which always come before their
arguments. The Sulpuric version of óbuúwøñ is bǿwyýñø (don’t worry, the change of the
vowels is due to POST’s sound change rules; they’re still the same vowels, phonemically
speaking. <y> is pronounced similarly to the IPA’s), and would be used in the clause
bǿwyýñø iáñiíñam ‘(The) food (is) fattening.’)

Because all adjectival senses are verbs in POST, all “adjectives” are just relative clauses.
Therefore, verbal senses modifying nouns are treated exactly the same. For example, sǿsyýwøch
eléerél (<r> is an alveolar tap [ɾ] word-medially) means ‘loved one(s) who do(es) not speak,’
a phrase I use to refer to my pets.

A final example, this time with a Sulphuric: ñeñíimé ísiíthitl (IPA: [ɲe̞˨.ɲɪː˦˨.me̞˦.ʔi˦.zi˨˦.ðit͡ɬ˨]),
meaning ‘(I) eat healthily.’ ‘Eat’ is of course ñeñíimé, ísiíthitl is ‘healthily’ (note the VCVCVC
pattern), and ‘I’ is only implied to be the subject without further context (despite not con-
jugating for person, POST is pro-drop).

An Example Using the Infinitive Mood, For Good Measure

Infinitives in POST correspond to those in English (i.e. verbs with the preposition “to”
before them), and are used for very similar constructions: “I want to X,” “I need to X,” “I
am able to X,” “It’s easy/hard/embarrassing/good/bad to X,” et cetera. Let’s examine the
following POST sentence to get a better idea of how it works there.

(1) í lhetsíivéll jíquíth chelhíisé ua.

[i˦ ɬə˨.t͡siː˦˨.βəɬ˦ ji˦.kʷiθ˦ çə˨.ɬi˦˨.sə˦ wa˨]
í lhetsíivéll jíquíth chelhíisé ua
at forest move.REFL.CAUS.INF want.AFF.DIR.ACT.PRS 1.SG
“I want to go into the woods.”

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 As noted in the gloss above, the third word jíquíth is in the infinitive form. Here we can
see the characteristic shape of infinitives: CVCVC. Infinitives always carry this shape.

Also of note is the syntactic construction on display here. Matrix clauses, like chelhíisé
ua, have a syntax of either VSO or VOS, depending on if the Sulphuric is conjugated to
be direct or inverse (look up direct/inverse distinction in languages like Navajo for more
information). However, dependent clauses, like í lhetsíivéll jíquíth, follow a SOV/OSV
word order (the more animate noun is still listed first.) Additionally, all dependent clauses
in a given POST sentence must precede the matrix clause, meaning matrix clauses always
come last. This applies to dependent clauses using the conjunctive tense as well.

Below is a table of all eight coagulants in POST.

Coagulant (IPA) Noun Class

s- (/s/) humans, animals, anything with a “will”
f- (/ɸ/) trees, shrubs, and woody vines
th- (/θ/) herbaceous plants and other forms of life
lh- (/ɬ/) places, times, abstractions, and gases
l- (/l/) liquids, pourable solids, and containers thereof
r- (/r/) long, flexible objects
u- (/w/) long, inflexible objects
i- (/j/) solid objects, anything heavy with relation to volume

Some Examples Using the Conjunctive Tense, For Better

Measure
Sulphuric verbs in POST can have one of three tenses: present, past and future (this is a
massive oversimplification of how tense actually works in POST, but that’s beyond the scope
of this article.) Mercurial senses carry one additional tense: the conjunctive tense. Used for
a number of purposes shown below, it is primarily used to express events that happen either
sequentially leading up to the Sulphuric verb, or at the same time as the Sulphuric. An
example:

(2) í lhøwíinguǿx chelhérií búútlotlótl úúquotlóth sííreréx!

í lhøwíinguǿx chelhérií búútlotlótl úúquotlóth
at street run.CONJ.DIR.AFF hit.PST.INV.AFF.ACT nearly.PST.AFF
sííreréx
person.pejorative.PST
“I was running down the street when this guy nearly ran me over!”
lit. “I ran down the street, and this guy nearly hit me!”

Of note, the conjunctive verb in this sentence, chelhérií, does not follow the VCVCVC
pattern that other Mercurial verbs do, and thus cannot take a coagulant. It also ends with a
rising tone, a trait unique to conjunctive verbs.

Conjunctive verbs have other uses as well, of course. Combined with one of POST’s eight
locative verbs, it can be used to form an imperfective aspect. For instance:

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(3) í lhøwíinguǿx chelhérií rííresé.

í lhøwíinguǿx chelhérií rííresé
at street run.CONJ be.PST
“I was running down the street.”

Conjunctive verbs can also be combined with one of POST’s four prepositions to form the
senses “if,” “since/because,” “in order to,” and “despite.” Here are some example sentences
to demonstrate this phenomenon:

í sethétlií sethíibé. “If I am physically healthy, then I am mentally healthy.”

né sethétlií sethíibé. “Because I am physically healthy, I am mentally healthy.”

whú sethébií síthiítli. “In order to be mentally healthy, I make myself physically healthy.”

quá sethétlií sethéebé. “Despite being physically healthy, I am not mentally healthy.”

Conclusion
I originally designed POST to be a language to help me examine more closely how the
world outside my head affects the world inside my heart. I wanted to focus less on what the
things contributing to my anxiety and depression were, and more on what they were doing to
stoke those negative feelings. With that in mind, I knew verbal constructions had be part of
the language’s foundation. It took a long time to decide upon how exactly I wanted to handle
things like nouns, adjectives, adverbs, but I would like to think I have devised a satisfactory
system of derivation using dependent verbs. I sadly don’t have a central location to learn
about POST that’s publicly available. However, any interested readers can learn more about
POST from my Reddit posts under the name u/mukbangmustache. Thank you for reading
and thank you to the Segments team to help me share POST with a broader audience.

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 A Unified View of the
15 Anroo Suffix ­ra

by miacomet (a.k.a. u/roipoiboy)

Finding a language's voice

Anroo is a group of dialects spoken by nearly one million residents of the Junpa Islands in
the Southern Archipelago. The language is being actively transmitted to children, although
there is language shift to Mekaḷe among some urban speakers. Urban Anroo speakers are
often multilingual, speaking Mekaḷe or southern Mwaneḷe dialects, but rural speakers are of-
ten monolingual. Judgments were obtained from fluent speakers of Anroo who are bilingual
with Mwaneḷe.

Nouns, verbs, and ideophones are the only open word classes; closed word classes include
adpositions, adjectives, pronouns, and particles. Anroo verbs inflect for egophoricity, aspect,
and voice. One voice suffix in particular, -ra, has proven difficult to describe. This paper
suggests a new analysis of -ra.

I’ll begin with some notes on Anroo grammar which will help in understanding the mean-
ing of the suffix -ra. Then I’ll outline the environments in which -ra occurs. Next I’ll discuss
past explanations of the suffix before presenting a new analysis. Last, I’ll talk about how it
squares with previously unexplained data.

Introduction to Anroo
Sentence Structure
In sentences with intransitive verbs, the single argument, which I’ll call S, comes before
the verb. Anroo has two different places where verb objects can go. The first, which I’ll call
the P position, comes immediately before the verb. The second, which I’ll call the E position,
comes after the verb. Generally objects in the P position are highly affected, more canonical
transitive verb objects, while objects in the E position tend to be less highly affected objects,
recipients and goals, or experiencers. When a verb has both an agent and an object in the P
position, the agent comes before the object and is marked with the ergative case clitic =ku.
I’ll call the ergative-marked subjects A. These four roles are distinguished by their position in

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the sentence, their topic marker selection, and their interactions with voice marking. Here
are the four common coding frames, using the above abbreviations along with V for the
verb.

(1) a. S V (Intransitive)
b. S V E (Extended Intransitive)
c. A=ku P V (Transitive)
d. A=ku P V E (Extended Transitive/Ditransitive)

Topic Marking
The topic of a sentence defines the context in which the listener is meant to interpret the
sentence or refers to something previously mentioned to situate the sentence in discourse.
It’s marked with one of three topic markers and followed by a prosodic break. The particle
ku marks the topicalized A of a transitive verb.1

(2) Xitra ku, nuuhu wo ñii nle.

xitra ku nuuhu wo ñii n= nle
NAME TOP.ERG knowledge not.have person ATTR= 2
“As for Xitra, she doesn’t know who you are.”

The particle ro marks the topicalized P of a transitive verb.

(3) Mù ro, nki iimnraa-kii.

mù ro nki iim -ra =ki
rice TOP.ACC 3 eat -RA =DEL
“As for the rice, they ate some of it.”

The particle a marks everything else, including S of an intransitive verb, E of an extended

transitive or intransitive, and any adjunct or adverbial clause. Adverbial phrases marked
with a do not have to be constituents extracted from the sentence. They can stand on their
own.

(4) Fawo a, took mee-toon ènparènpa.

fawo a took mee =tol ènparènpa
canoe TOP leave just =PRSP IDEO:gentle.floating
“The canoe is about to float away.” (5MOYD #1200)

(5) Gatè a, npo mxaar.

gatè a npo m- xaa -ra
termite TOP 1.PL NEG- want -RA
“That brat isn’t the one we want.”
1
Unlike the homophonous ergative marker ku, the topic marker doesn’t undergo nasalization harmony
with the word before it.

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(6) Hak ga a, xèlù-ku nroom npa imee towoon.
hak ga a xèlù =ku nroom npa imee towoon
every day.before TOP cook =ERG need have dried.noodles hang
“The night before every day, the cook has to hang noodles to dry.” (AN–COOK)

When you topicalize or focus adjectives, you can’t move them by themselves: you have
to move the noun they modify too. This is called ‘pied piping.’ Adjectives are always
topicalized with a, even if they pied-pipe a noun phrase that would be assigned ergative
or accusative case. Topicalizing the complement of an adposition pied-pipes the adposition.
The complement must come before the word that governs it and be followed immediately
by the topic marker, which results in inversion for objects of prepositions.

(7) Hojè a ñii, poku ehontura-jè.

hojè a ñii po =ku e- hontu -ra =jè
gushing TOP person 1.SG =ERG EGO- give.in.to -RA =DUR
“Talkative people, I can’t stand them.”

(8) Riyu a xo, xèlù-ku oojaa eko kelora-ki.

riye -u a xo xèlù =ku oojaa eko kelor -ra =ki
knife -OBL TOP with cook =ERG sharp onion cut.with.knife -RA =DEL
“With a knife, the cook chops pungent onions.” (AN–COOK)

Attributives with n=
Some kinds of modifiers follow the noun, linked to it with the clitic n=. These include
attributive nouns, full clause modifiers, and gapped relative clauses. The following examples
show different kinds of attributive modifiers (marked in square brackets []), all following
their heads with the attributive marker n=.

(9) Xèlù npo o’ase-ku hojè ora goo-jèè kra selkeltel.

xèlù n= [ po o-ase ] =ku hojè ora goo =jè kra
cook ATTR= 1.SG POSS-friend =ERG gushing work work.hard =DUR work.hard
selkeltel
IDEO:busy
“My friend the cook has a busy life.” (AN–COOK)

(10) M nki sarke to troha vo.

m n= [ nki sarke to ] troha vo
fact ATTR= 3 lean too fall see
“It turned out she was sick too.” (AN–BOAT)

(11) Npoku waam nra kasol entù soo plezè anroo.

npo= ku waam n= [ nra kasol ] e- ntù soo plezè anroo
1.PL= ERG drink ATTR= give health EGO- choose take elder local
“We bought refreshing drinks from an old local.” (AN–BOAT)

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 Anroo

(12) Halce nki vur omo npe faa ro, npo evovor, iltè ehili-zo.
halce n= [ nki vu -ra omo npe faa ] ro npo e- vovo -ra
boat ATTR= 3 say -RA house in return TOP.ACC 1.PL EGO- find -RA
iltè e- hili =zo
and.so EGO- line.up =INCH
“We found the boat that she said went home, so we got in line.” (AN–BOAT)

All gapped clause modifiers are restrictive: they pick out a specific referent with that prop-
erty. Other clausal modifiers may be restrictive or non-restrictive: they may pick out a
specific referent, but they may also just provide additional or parenthetical information
about a noun. Compare the restrictive modifier in 13 with the non-restrictive modifier in
14.

(13) Context: Talol and Xitra both cooked rice, but I only want what Talol cooked.
Po eexaa mù nTalol-ku xùra-ci.
po e- xaa mù1 n= Talol =ku t1 xù -ra =ci
1.SG EGO- want rice ATTR= NAME =ERG cook -RA =CMP
“I want the rice that Talol cooked.”

(14) Context: There’s only 1 pot of rice. Talol cooked it, and I want it.
Po eexaa mù nTalol xù-ci.
po e- xaa mù n= Talol xù =ci
1.SG EGO- want rice ATTR= NAME cook =CMPL
“I want the rice, which Talol cooked.”

In sentence 13, the speaker says that the rice they want is specifically the rice that Talol
cooked, whereas in sentence 14 the identity of the rice is already established, and the speaker
is merely adding information about who cooked it. The fact that Talol is marked as ergative
in 13 but not in 14 is evidence that the first is a gapped clause and the second is not. Some
P must be present to get ergative case assigned to the A. In this case, that’s the trace of mù,
which was extracted to form the clause.

Distribution of the ­ra Suffix

When the object of a verb is topicalized or focused, -ra2 usually occurs on the verb, whether
the object is a P or an E. This also occurs when you front part of the noun phrase of an object.

(15) Mù ro, nki iimnraa-kii.

mù ro nki iim -ra =ki
rice TOP.ACC 3 eat -RA =DEL
“As for the rice, they ate some of it.”
2
The suffix’s default form is -ra, but it can also surface as -r after vowels and -nraa after nasal consonants
or oral consonants following nasal vowels. For most speakers it’s still -ra after vowels for monomoraic stems.

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(16) Gatè a, npo mxaar go.
gatè a npo m- xaa -ra go
termite TOP 1.PL NEG- want -RA DP
“That brat isn’t the one we want.”

However, it never occurs when topicalizing first- or second-person pronouns. For many
speakers it is optional for third person pronouns and personal names.

(17) Xitra ro, po odèl vovo-ci.

Xitra ro po o- dèl vo~ vo =ci
NAME TOP.ACC 1.SG POSS- friend RDP~ see =CMPL
“As for Xitra, my friend has found her.”

(18) We, po ro, ñùùmñùùm eetee nol!

we po ro ñùùm ~ñùùm e- tee nol
DP 1.SG TOP.ACC cat ~DIM EGO- look.at try
“Wow, the kitten was looking for me!”

When adverbs are topicalized, -ra can appear or not appear.

(19) Lorjè a, npoku xi ee’iimnraa.

lorjè a npo =ku xi e- iim -ra
morning TOP 1.PL =ERG thing EGO- eat -RA
“This morning, we ate something.”

(20) Hak ga a, xèlù-ku nroom imee towoon.

hak ga a xèlù =ku nroom npa imee towoon
every day.before TOP cook =ERG need have dried.noodles hang
“The night before every day, the cook has to hang noodles to dry.” (AN–COOK)

The copula and existential verbs cannot take -ra.

(21) Lorjè a, npoku xi niim wo.

lorjè a npo =ku xi n= iim wo
morning TOP 1.PL =ERG thing ATTR= eat not.have
“This morning, we didn’t eat anything.”

(22) *Lorjè a, npoku xi niim wor.

lorjè a npo =ku xi n= iim wo-ra
morning TOP 1.PL =ERG thing ATTR= eat not.have-RA
Intended: “This morning, we didn’t eat anything.”

The first finite verb of a relative clause often takes -ra. All relative clauses with -ra are
restrictive, but not all restrictive clauses have -ra.

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 Anroo

(23) Nkiku ntama npo evo kixi-ci.

nki =ku ntama n= po e- vo kixi =ci
3 =ERG story ATTR= 1.SG EGO- believe tell.story =CMPL
“He told a story, which I believe.”

(24) Nkiku ntama npo evor kixi-ci.

nki =ku ntama n= po e- vo -ra kixi =ci
3 =ERG story ATTR= 1.SG EGO- believe -RA tell.story =CMPL
“He told the story that I believe.”

In some SVCs, only the first verb is marked with -ra, but in others, multiple verbs can be
marked.

(25) Xuu a, poku nle etriyèr soo.

xuu a po =ku nle e- triyè -ra soo
banana TOP 1.SG =ERG 2 EGO- steal.from -RA take
“The banana, I stole from you.”

(26) Ntama a, poku nle enrar klèrar.

ntama a po =ku nle e- nra -ra klèra -ra
news TOP 1.SG =ERG 2 EGO- give -RA hear -RA
“The news, I told you.”

Recently an additional context was reported in which -ra occurs. It occurs when you top-
icalize or focus the subjects of certain intransitive verbs, but not others. These new data
contradicted past descriptions of -ra, prompting the research that lead to this paper.

(27) Talol a, nlai-jè jè koofa npe.

talol a nlai =jè jè koofa npe
NAME TOP stay =DUR in bed in
“Talol is staying in bed.”

(28) Lela a, priinraa-toon rùùlùù.

lela a prii -ra =tol rùùlùù
NAME TOP sleep -RA =PRSP IDEO:groggy
“Lela is about to fall asleep.”

Past Description of ­ra

The first description of Anroo treated -ra as an ‘inverse voice’ marker. They observed
that it occurred when something other than the subject was put in a discourse-prominent
position. Since subjects are more likely to be high on the animacy hierarchy and objects and
adjuncts are more likely to be low on the hierarchy, topicalization of a non-subject tends
to mean that the most animate constituent is not the most central or topical one. It was
also observed that -ra didn’t occur when you fronted highly animate non-subjects such as
personal pronouns or proper nouns.

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 However, a description of -ra as an inverse marker is incomplete. If it were purely an
inverse marker, you could expect it to occur whenever the object is highly animate and the
subject is not. But this is not what we see.

(29) Noolkaa-kuu po entau kaxùnta.

noolkaa =ku po e- ntau kaxùnta
wave =ERG 1.SG EGO- hit IDEO:rough.sea
“The waves crashed into me.”

Additionally, framing -ra purely in the context of a mismatch in ordering between the most
animate and most salient participants only makes sense in contexts where multiple orderings
are possible. With a single participant, no such mismatch is possible. This predicts that -ra
will never occur with intransitive verbs, which is shown to be false in example 28. Therefore
-ra can’t be explained simply as a direct-inverse marker.

A later treatment of Anroo describes -ra as a marker of agreement with the topicalization of
certain elements, comparing it to kakari-musubi, a process in some Japonic languages where
focusing triggers a special form of verb agreement. This raises the question of why it would
occur in certain relative clauses. They explain this by proposing that the head of a relative
clause must first move to a topic position inside the relative clause, trigger agreement, and
then move again out into the matrix clause.

(30) Po eexaa mù nTalol-ku xùra-ci.

po e- xaa mù1 n= [TOP t 1 ] Talol =ku t1 xù -ra =ci
1.SG EGO- want rice ATTR= NAME =ERG cook -RA =CMP

“I want the rice that Talol cooked.”

They suggest that in restrictive relative clauses the head starts out inside the clause and
moves to the topic position before moving out, whereas in non-restrictive relative clauses,
the head starts out already outside of the clause. This matches the observation that gapped
relative clauses are always restrictive and would explain the distribution of -ra in these two
clause types.

This analysis is not without problems, however. It can’t predict which SVCs require double-
marking and which do not allow it. It also doesn’t explain why certain intransitive verbs
take -ra but not others. This incomplete model motivates further investigation into -ra.

A New Take on ­ra

Topicalization, focusing, and relativization involve movement of the relevant prominent
constituent. The fact that -ra appears in gapped relative clauses and when transitive verbs’
objects are topicalized suggests that it coocurs with movement. More specifically, since -
ra seems to appear with operations on objects and certain adjuncts, which are in the verb
phrase (VP), but not on agents, which are not in the VP, I suggest that -ra marks movement
out of the VP.

I’ve already given examples of cases where you get -ra after topicalizing or focusing ob-
jects in straightforward APV or SVE sentences, so I’m going to focus on some of the less
straightforward cases.

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 Anroo

Relative Clauses
Anroo relative clauses may be gapped or not. Examples like 13 and 14 show that all gapped
relative clauses are restrictive. The suffix -ra always occurs with gapped restrictive relatives
of non-subjects, but never occurs with their corresponding non-restrictive clauses. This is
because the former are formed by moving the head of the relative clause out of the VP, but
the latter involve no movement, because the head doesn’t start in the VP. Following this
analysis, pronouns in relative clauses that corefer to the clause’s head are not resumptive
pronouns left behind after the head moves, but simply regular pronouns. When resumption
competes with gapping, it always has a non-restrictive reading, suggesting that it behaves
more like non-gapped relative clauses than gapped ones. Verbs in clauses with resumption
do not take -ra.

(31) Po eexaa mù nTalol-ku xùra-ci.

po e- xaa mù1 n= Talol =ku [VP t 1 xù -ra =ci ]
1.SG EGO- want rice ATTR= NAME =ERG cook -RA =CMP

“I want the rice that Talol cooked.”

(32) Po eexaa mù nTalol xù-ci.

po e- xaa mù n= Talol [VP xù =ci ]
1.SG EGO- want rice ATTR= NAME cook =CMPL
“I want the rice, which Talol cooked.”

(33) Po eexaa mù nTalol-ku nki xù-ci.

po e- xaa mù1 n= Talol =ku [VP nki1 xù =ci ]
1.SG EGO- want rice ATTR= NAME =ERG 3 cook =CMP
“I want the rice, which Talol cooked.”

It’s easy to see gapping in relative clauses when it is the S, A, or P being gapped, but it is less
clear when it is the E or an adjunct, since unlike S or A, they aren’t obligatory, and unlike P
they don’t trigger marking elsewhere. However, they exhibit a similar pattern of alternation
between restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses.

(34) Nkiku ntama npo vo kixi-ci.

nki =ku ntama n= po [VP e- vo ] kixi =ci
3 =ERG story ATTR= 1.SG EGO- believe tell.story =CMPL
“He told a story, which I believe.”

(35) Nkiku ntama npo vor kixi-ci.

nki =ku ntama1 n= po [VP e- vo -ra t1 ] kixi =ci
3 =ERG story ATTR= 1.SG EGO- believe -RA tell.story =CMPL

“He told the story that I believe.”

Overtly, -ra is the only marker that such a relative clause is restrictive. Earlier description
of Anroo suggested that -ra might itself be marking the clauses as restrictive, which would

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explain why it cooccurs with gapped relative clauses. However, it’s simpler to say that
sentences like 31 are gapped relative clauses with the same structure as the examples above,
and that -ra has one consistent role: marking movement out of VP.

Multiple Verb Constructions

If we think that -ra marks movement out of VP, then it might be interesting to see whether
it shows up in other constructions where a constituent might move out of some VP. In the
first section, I noted that some SVCs get double-marked with -ra, but others don’t. I’ll argue
that in spite of the surface similarities of sentences 36, 37, and 38, there are really three
underlying syntactic structures, some involving extraction from one VP and some involving
extraction from two VPs. These predict whether the second verb in the construction gets
marked with -ra or not.

(36) Xuu a, poku nle etriyèr soo(r).

[TOP xuu ]1 a po =ku [VP nle e- triyè -ra [VP? soo -(ra) t 1 ] ]
banana TOP 1.SG =ERG 2 EGO- steal.from -RA take -RA

“The banana, I stole from you.”

(37) Ntama a, poku nle enrar klèra(r).
[TOP ntama ]1 a po =ku [VP nle e- nra-ra [VP? klèra -(ra) t1 ] ]
news TOP 1.SG =ERG 2 EGO- give-RA hear -RA

“The news, I told you.”

(38) Ha m a, poku nle evor cùl(ra).
[TOP ha m ]1 a po =ku [VP nle e- vo -ra [VP? cùl -(ra) t 1 ] ]
big event TOP 1.SG =ERG 2 EGO- see -RA go -RA

“The whole story, I believe you [about].”

To test the hypothesis that a verb gets marked with -ra when something A’-moves out of the
VP it heads, we want to figure out where exactly the VPs are and watch what happens when
we extract something from them. Let’s take a look at each sentence’s unmarked equivalent,
where there’s no topicalization to confound things, and figure out whether the multiple verb
constructions in each one are contain a single VP or multiple.

We can start with sentence 36, which has an asymmetrical SVC with the major verb triyè
‘to steal from’ and the minor verb soo ‘to take.’ The verb soo is used to introduce an additional
argument, in this case the thing being taken.

(39) Poku nle etriyè soo xuu.

po =ku nle e- triyè soo xuu
1.SG =ERG 2 EGO- steal.from take banana
“I stole the banana from you.”

Anroo sometimes allows topicalization of verbs, commonly in questions. This is realized

either by topicalizing the entire verb phrase or by copying the verb. For bipartite verbs or

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lexicalized symmetrical SVCs, only the first word is copied. It’s possible to topicalize triyè,
but it’s impossible to topicalize soo here.

(40) Triyè a, poku nle etriyè soo xuu?

triyè a po =ku nle e- triyè soo xuu
steal TOP 1.SG =ERG 2 EGO- steal.from take banana
“(As for stealing,) did I steal the banana from you?”

(41) *Soo a, poku nle etriyè soo xuu?

soo a po =ku nle e- triyè take banana
take TOP 1.SG =ERG 2 EGO- steal.from take banana
Intended: “As for taking, did I steal the banana from you?”

(42) *Soo xuu a, poku nle etriyè?

soo xuu a po =ku nle e- triyè
take banana TOP 1.SG =ERG 2 EGO- steal.from
Intended: “As for taking the banana, did I steal it from you?”

It’s also impossible to negate the two verbs separately. Only triyè can be marked for nega-
tion, which is sentential negation.

(43) Poku nle metriyè soo xuu.

po =ku nle m- e- triyè soo xuu
1.SG =ERG 2 NEG- EGO- steal.from take banana
“I didn’t steal the banana from you.”

(44) *Poku nle etriyè msoo xuu.

po =ku nle e- triyè m- soo xuu
1.SG =ERG 2 EGO- steal.from NEG- take banana
Intended: “I stole the banana not from you.”

Only inflectional material can come between the two verbs, not adverbs or other lexical
material.

(45) Poku nle etriyè-tol soo xuu.

po =ku nle e- triyè =tol soo xuu
1.SG =ERG 2 EGO- steal.from =PRSP take banana
“I will steal the banana from you.”

(46) *Poku nle etriyè ga soo xuu.

po =ku nle e- triyè ga soo xuu
1.SG =ERG 2 EGO- steal.from day.before take banana
Intended: “I stole the banana from you yesterday.”

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The verbs can’t be separately negated, can’t take separate aspect marking, can’t be separated
by any other words, and can’t be topicalized separately. The two verbs behave for all intents
and purposes as two parts of a compound predicate. As a single predicate, they comprise a
single VP, so we expect to see -ra only appear once, on the first verb. That matches what
we see not only in sentence 47, but in other asymmetrical SVCs of this type.

(47) Xuu a, poku nle etriyèr soo.

[TOP xuu ]1 a po =ku [VP nle e- triyè -ra soo -ra t1 ]
banana TOP 1.SG =ERG 2 EGO- steal.from -RA take -RA
“The banana, I stole from you.”

(48) Hal riye a, nkiku taso cikar loom.

[TOP hal riye ]1 a nki =ku [VP taso cika -ra loom t 1 ]
sharp knife TOP 3 =ERG cord cut -RA hold
“With the sharp knife she cut the cord.”

Sentence 37 contains another productive SVC construction, the causative introduced with
nra ‘to give’. You can compare sentence 37 with the following sentence, with no extraction
to complicate things.

(49) Poku nle enra klèra ntama.

po =ku nle e- nra klèra ntama
1.SG =ERG 2 EGO- give hear news
“I told you the news.”

Similarly to in the last construction, the second verb in a causative construction can’t receive
independent negation or aspect marking.3

(50) Poku nle menra-tol klèra ntama.

po =ku nle m- e- nra =tol klèra ntama
1.SG =ERG 2 NEG- EGO- give =PRSP hear news
“I am not going to tell you the news.”

(51) *Poku nle enra mklèra ntama.

po =ku nle e- nra m- klèra ntama
1.SG =ERG 2 EGO- give NEG- hear news
Intended: “I made you not hear the news.”

(52) *Poku nle enra klèra-tol ntama.

po =ku nle e- nra klèra =tol ntama
1.SG =ERG 2 EGO- give hear =PRSP news
Intended: “I made you be about to hear the news.”
3
One exception to this is the seemingly lexicalized expression nra mnar ‘to break something artificial,’ lit.
‘give NEG-repair,’ but this pattern isn’t productive.

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However, unlike the last construction, it is possible to topicalize the second verb and its
object. This suggests that the second verb is in a phrase embedded under nra which is
smaller than negation and aspect, but at least as large as VP.

(53) Waam ovètu a, nkiku po nrar waamnraa npamaga.

waam o- vètu a nki =ku po nra -ra npamaga
drink POSS- word TOP 3 =ERG 1.SG give -RA IDEO:deceive
“As for believing his lies, he made me do it.”

If the secondary verb heads an embedded VP, then we’d expect to be able to put other things
like adverbs or adjuncts in that VP.

(54) Lela-ku po nra cika taso xo hal riyu.

Lela =ku po nra cika taso xo hal riye -u
NAME =ERG 1.SG give cut cord with sharp knife -OBL
“Lela made me cut the cord with a sharp knife.”

Like in the English translation, there’s some ambiguity in sentence 54 with what the adjunct
is modifying. Did I use the sharp knife to cut the cord? Or did Lela use the sharp knife to
make me do it? In the sense where my cord cutting was done with the knife, we’d expect
for the prepositional phrase to adjoin to the inner VP headed by cika ‘to cut’. On the other
hand, if the causing was done with the knife, then we’d expect it to be outside of the cika
phrase, adjoining instead to the VP headed by the causative verb nra. If it’s moving out of a
different place in each version of sentence, then topicalizing the prepositional phrase should
distinguish the two. We can see that it does!

(55) Context: Lela was holding a sharp knife and threatened she would use it if I didn’t
cut the cord.
Hal riyu a xo, Lela-ku po nrar cika taso
hal riye -u a xo Lela =ku [VP po nra ra [VP cika taso ] t ]
sharp knife -OBL TOP with NAME =ERG 1.SG give RA cut cord
“With the sharp knife, Lela made me cut the cord.”

(56) Context: Lela asked me to do her a favor and to use the sharp knife I was holding to
cut the cord.
Hal riyu a xo, Lela-ku po nrar cikar taso
hal riye -u a xo Lela =ku [VP po nra -ra [VP cika -ra taso
sharp knife -OBL TOP with NAME =ERG 1.SG give -RA cut -RA cord
t]]

“With the sharp knife, Lela made me cut the cord.”

This suggests that unlike the flat SVC construction in sentence 36, the causative construction
in sentences like 37 consists of a VP embedded in another VP and that extraction from the

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outer VP only results in one verb getting -ra, but extraction from the inner VP results in both
getting marked.4

(57) Ntama a, poku nle enrar klèrar.

[TOP ntama ]1 a po =ku [VP nle e- nra -ra [VP klèra -ra t1 ] ]
news TOP 1.SG =ERG 2 EGO- give -RA hear -RA
“The news, I told you.”

Next I’ll look back to sentence 38. Without topicalization, it corresponds to the following
sentence.

(58) Poku nle evo cùl ha m.

po =ku nle e- vo cùl ha m
1.SG =ERG 2 EGO- see go big event
“I believe you about the whole thing.”

The verb construction in 38 has the same surface structure as the ones in sentences 36 and
37, and is pronounced with the same intonation, but it has a different underlying structure.
When I first checked negation with my consultants, they judged that you could negate vo
but not cùl.

(59) Poku nle mevo cùl ha m.

po =ku nle m- e- vo cùl ha m
1.SG =ERG 2 NEG- EGO- see go big event
“I don’t believe you about the whole thing.”
(60) *Poku nle evo mcùl ha m.
po =ku nle e- vo m- cùl ha m
1.SG =ERG 2 EGO- see NEG- go big event
Intended: “I don’t believe you about the whole thing.”

One of my consultants suggested the sentence poku nle evo mè cùl ha m. Instead of the
negative prefix m- usually used for verbal negation, she suggested the negative complemen-
tizer mè. This sentence doesn’t mean the same thing as what I was trying to say in sentence
60 though. It means something closer to “I believe you that the whole thing didn’t happen.”

I found that aspect marking of the second verb was possible too.

(61) Poku nle evo cùl-tol ha m.

po =ku nle e- vo cùl =tol ha m
1.SG =ERG 2 EGO- see go =PRSP big event
“I believe you the whole thing is about to happen.”
4
Several speakers disagreed specifically about double-marking in the expression nra klèra ‘to tell,’ lit. ‘to
make hear’ but agreed for other aribtrary causatives including 55 and 56, which suggests that nra klèra may
be lexicalized as a single three-place predicate for some speakers.

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The possibility of separate aspect marking and negation using mè suggests that there’s
not only a VP under vo, but an entire CP. The underlying structure here isn’t an SVC, but
an idiom containing a complement clause embedded under a verb. Inside the complement
clause, there has to be another VP, so I’d predict that both verbs in sentence 37 get marked
with -ra. That matches what we see.

(62) Ha m a, poku nle evor cùlra.

[TOP ha m ]1 a po =ku [VP nle e- vo -ra ∅ [VP cùl-ra t 1 ] ]
big event TOP 1.SG =ERG 2 EGO- see -RA CMP go-RA
“The whole story, I believe you [about].”

Unlike the previous analyses of -ra, this is able to predict which multiple verb constructions
have double marking and which have single marking.

Treatment of Intransitives
The observation that led to this study was that certain intransitive verbs consistently take
-ra when their subjects are moved, and others consistently do not. The idea that -ra marks
extraction from the VP would predict that it will occur when you move the subject of an
unaccusative verb, but not of an unergative verb.5

There are a couple ways to check if an intransitive verb is unergative or unaccusative in

Anroo. Unergative verbs often allow cognate objects, for example the verb enlo ‘to sing,
to perform,’ generally intransitive, can take the cognate object renlo ‘a song.’ Unaccusative
verbs, on the other hand, can’t take cognate objects.

(63) Nkiku hùù renlo enlo-jè.

nki =ku hùù renlo enlo =jè
3 =ERG pleasant song sing =DUR
“He was singing a lovely song.”

(64) *Nkiku hojè prii prii-cii.

nki =ku hojè prii prii =ci
3 =ERG gushing sleep sleep =CMPL
Intended: “They slept a furious sleep.”

(65) *Sapi-ku ozu amaa hak amaa-cii.

sapi =ku ozu amaa hak amaa =ci
brigade =ERG bad death all die =CMPL
Intended: “The whole brigade died terrible deaths.”

Another test involves voice morphology. Anroo has a suffix -hi, which makes autobene-
factive or automalefactive passives when applied to transitive verbs.
5
Unaccusative verbs are intransitive verbs whose single argument patterns like a patient and unergative
verbs are those whose single argument patterns like an agent.

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(66) Nkepe lico clitohi-ci.
nkepe lico clito -hi =ci
child teeth move -ATB =CMPL
“The kid got itself bitten.” (5MOYD #1238)

You can apply -hi to unaccusative intransitive verbs to make autocausative verbs like this,
but you can’t apply it to unergative verbs. (Interestingly, verbs marked with -hi are always
treated as unergative themselves.)

(67) Loom azo a, klèlor amaahii-toon.

loom azo a klèlor amaa -hi =tol
hold do.so TOP soldier die -ATB =PRSP
“If he keeps going, the soldier’s going to get himself killed.”

(68) *Noinpaa enlohi ga.

noinpaa enlo -hi ga
clown sing -ATB day.before
Intended: “The clown got himself to sing/perform yesterday.”

Tests like these show that Anroo does distinguish between unaccusative and unergative
verbs. It turns out that the intransitive verbs that consistently take -ra match those that the
other tests pick out as unaccusative. Supposing that -ra marks movement out of the VP lets
you predict which intransitive verbs take -ra and which don’t.

(69) Klèlor nao a, amaanraa-cii.

klèlor n= ao a amaa -ra =ci
soldier ATTR= there TOP die -RA =CMPL
“That soldier, he died.”

(70) Noinpaa nao a, enlo-ci.

noinpaa n= ao a enlo =ci
clown ATTR= there TOP sing =CMPL
“That clown, he sang.”

Conclusion
In this paper, I suggest a new analysis of the Anroo suffix -ra. I proposed that it marks ex-
traction from the VP. This improves on previous analyses in predicting which multiple verb
constructions are double marked and which intransitive verbs take -ra when their subject is
extracted, while continuing to account for alternations present in relative clauses.

Several things remain to be seen. Topicalized adverbs may or may not take -ra, which
I explain by saying that they can be extracted from the VP or start out directly in topic
position. I’m curious what tests there could be to distinguish between extracted and high-
generated adverbs and see whether they match sentences collected with and without -ra. In
some languages, the subjects of unaccusative verbs can be shown to have raised out of the

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VP to a subject position. If this is the case in Anroo, why don’t plain intransitive verbs have
-ra? If this is not the case, how could I show that it is not the case? Last, this proposal leaves
the fact that -ra doesn’t occur with extracted SAPs or proper nouns as an exception to the
rule. Is there any way to unify that with the proposed meaning, or is it best to just posit that
since SAPs and proper nouns are more likely to be topical, there’s less functional pressure
to mark their extraction? Work is already ongoing to find answers to these questions and
learn more about voice morphology in Anroo.

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 Case Marking Paradigms
16 in Tabesj

by Boomfruit

A Diachronic Analysis

Tabesj is a naturalistic language that I started working on in February of 2021 with a

few goals: ergative-absolutive alignment, strong and stubborn head-finality, lots of syllabic
consonants (blame the Yiddish music I was listening to at the time, or at least my perception
of it), and extensive phonemic palatalization and labialization. For this article, I’ll focus
mainly on the first point and a bit on the second. Namely, how the ergative-absolutive
alignment came to be, how it led to the standard case marking paradigm, and how other
paradigms came to be and in what situations the alignment can change.

Origin of Tabesj Alignment

Tabesj is a (generally) Subject-Object-Verb language with split-ergative alignment, whereas
scholars agree that the ancestor of Tabesj, called Tesjṇ Tabesj (hereafter referred to as TT),
was a Subject-Verb-Object language with nominative-accusative alignment. The most com-
mon explanation of Tabesj alignment is from a reanalyzation of the passive construction.

The most common way of forming simple transitive sentences in TT was SVO with a marked
accusative, as in (1).

(1) Zape kasi axhov. Tesjṇ Tabesj

zape kasi axho =v
man eat food =ACC
“The man eats the food.”

The accusative marker is -v, still used only in sentences with Active Discourse Participants
as discussed below, and in certain verbs with incorporated objects fossilized in the accusative
case, like emosamṿ ‘to drum/to play a drum’ (compare sam ‘a drum’).

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TT also had a passive construction, which promoted the former object of a transitive verb
to the nominative subject, most often leaving the former subject demoted to an oblique
position as in (2) and sometimes leaving it absent. The most common way to mark the
oblique was through a marker that mainly had ablative connotations, naka (from the word
for ‘to come.’) In TT, the standard position for obliques was at the end of sentences. There
is general agreement that the current finite verb marker -ta used to be the passivizer in TT.

(2) Axho kasi ta naka zape. Tesjṇ Tabesj

axho kasi ta naka sabe
food.NOM eat PSV from man
“The food is eaten by the man.”

The passive construction came to be used more and more often, to the point where it
replaced the “standard” construction, which eventually fell out of use. Therefore, it was no
longer understood to have a passive meaning.

The former passive marker was still used, and just thought of as part of the verb. We
can say that the standard word order was OVS, and since objects of transitive verbs were
unmarked, just like the sole arguments of intransitive verbs, we can begin to call that the
absolutive, and to say that there was ergative-absolutive alignment at this stage, at least for
simple transitive sentences, like in (3). The ablative/instrumental marker naka reduced to
na, and naturally took on an ergative meaning in addition to its other uses.

(3) Axo kateta na sabe. Early Modern Tabesj

axo kate -ta na sabe
food.ABS eat -V ERG man
“The man eats the food.”

A couple general trends conspired to change the way sentences were ordered. First, Tabesj
was always generally head-final, but at this stage, an even stronger preference among speak-
ers for head-finality emerged. Thus, the ergative use of the instrumental/ablative marker
became a nominal case clitic ra that followed the ergative clause, eventually shortening to
-r. Additionally, ergative obliques, considered background information, most often became
fronted in sentences, while other obliques, like locatives and instrumentals, took up position
immediately before the verb. Word order in simple transitive sentences is now SOV, as in
(4). The -ta transitive verbal marker took on its modern analysis as a finite verb marker.

(4) Saber axo kateta. Modern Tabesj

sabe =r axo kate -ta
man =ERG food.ABS eat -FIN
“The man eats the food.”

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Overview of Case Marking Paradigms and Their Triggers
SOV & Ergative­Absolutive—Standard Transitive Verbs
We have already discussed in depth the origin of Tabesj standard alignment. We can call
this the “standard” structure for a few reasons. It is considered the “default” structure; it
is by far the most common structure in speech, and if no other structure applies/is deemed
necessary, it is the one fallen back upon. Other structures have changed by analogy to mimic
this structure due to its assumed neutrality.

SOV & Dative­Absolutive—Sense Verbs

Verbs of this paradigm largely concern sense, perception, and experience, and generally
come from one of three sources:

1. Verbal adjectives
2. Adverbial/copular constructions
3. Involuntary sense verbs derived from base sense verbs

Notice that the dative subject, which was originally a dative oblique in a sentence-final
position, was fronted by analogy in the same way the ergative subject was fronted in the
standard transitive construction discussed above.

In the case of verbal adjective sources, they have undergone a reanalysis to behave as
transitive verbs. Compare a simple predicative usage of anra ‘to be lovely’ in (5) with the
verbal usage “to love” in (6)—note the addition by analogy of the finite verb marker FIN.

(5) Enka me anrā.

enka me anrā
night sky be.lovely
“The night sky is lovely.”

(6) Bṛam enka me anrāsa.

bṛ =m enka me anrā -ta
woman =DAT night sky.ABS love -FIN
“The woman loves the night sky.”
Or: “The woman is made to love the night sky.”
Or: “The night sky is lovely to the woman.”

In the case of adverbial/copular constructions, much the same has happened, though with
perhaps a less radical altering of the exact semantics of the original use. Compare the copular
usage of guoạ ‘to be like (something)’ in (7) with the transitive verbal usage ‘to perceive as’
in (8):

(7) Atue niēbaguoạ.

atue niēba -guo -ạ
rock fish -seem -COP
“The rock is fish-like.”

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 Tabesj

(8) Setom atue niēbaguoạ.

seto =m atue niēba -guo -ạ
boy =DAT rock.ABS fish -perceive -COP
“The boy perceives the rock as a fish.”
Or: “The rock is fish-like to the boy.”

Finally, the third case concerns mostly the so-called tol verbs or ‘be made to’ verbs, which
are derived from normal sense verbs to connote a lack of volition. These are what would be
translated into English as “see, hear, smell, taste, and feel,” as opposed to “look at, listen to,
(try to) smell/sniff, (try to) taste/sample, touch.” Compare the voluntary use of te ‘to look
at, look for’ in (9)—note the standard alignment—with the involuntary use ‘to (happen to)
see’ in (10).

(9) Jemkar qadie teta.

jemka =r qadie te -ta
girl =ERG dog.ABS look -FIN
“The girl looks at the dog.”

(10) Jemkam qadie tolteta.

jemka =m qadie tol -te -ta
girl =DAT dog.ABS INV -see -FIN
“The girl sees the dog.”
Or: “The girl is made to see the dog.”

Verbs that trigger this paradigm constitute an open class. Loanwords regularly pattern as
sense/emotion/experience verbs if they align with the semantic space speakers assign to the
existing class. Consider the verb eko ‘to believe in, to side with’ in (11), loaned from another
conlang of mine, Iekos.

(11) Ma vokos ekota.

ma vokos eko -ta
1.DAT general believe.in -FIN
“I believe in the general.”
Or: “I am made to believe in the general.”

SOV & ... A Big Mess—Reflexive and Associated Constructions

The case marking here is a bit tricky because of a lot of overlap in meanings that come
from one specific morpheme, bia. Specifically, it has its original reflexive meaning as well
as emphatic, antipassive voice, and progressive aspect meanings.

As Tabesj changed, ergative subjects could be, and regularly were, dropped when used
with transitive verbs. Absolutive arguments were thought of and analyzed as the default or
necessary argument.

First, the marker bia was used with transitive verbs to signify that the originator of an
action was the same as the recipient of that action. This is the reflexive usage, as in (12).

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(12) E bia emosa.
e bia emo -ta
3 REFL hit -FIN
“They hit themself.”
Or: “They were self-hit.”

Speakers sometimes desired a way to emphasize the subject, however, and bia was natu-
rally used for this purpose, as in (13). Interestingly, because of the original reflexive usage,
speakers didn’t use the ergative case with the subject, because they were used to using bia
with unmarked nouns. Additionally, speakers extended the use of bia to the subjects of
intransitive verbs, like in (14).

(13) E bia do emosa.

e bia do emo -ta
3 REFL 3.OBV hit -FIN
“They (emphatic) hit the other one.”
Or: “They themself hit the other one.”

(14) E bia noquosa.

e bia noquo -ta
3 REFL sleep -FIN
“They (emphatic) sleep.”
Or: “They themself sleep.”

Then, since the ergative subject was being emphasized in this particular construction,
the absolutive object could be dropped—quite rare in Tabesj! It was sometimes put into
an oblique position with the dative (at first, after the verb, and then the stubborn head-
finality pulled it back to before the verb). This gives us the antipassive construction which
is distinguished from the emphatic construction only when there is an object used, as in
(15). The antipassive construction is not used with intransitive verbs.

(15) E bia dom emosa.

e bia do -m emo -ta
3 REFL 3.OBV -DAT hit -FIN
“They (antipassive) hit the other one.”
Or: “They did hit at the other one.”

Finally, because of the ways in which the antipassive construction was often used, it came
to also connote the progressive aspect, which then spread to be used with intransitive verbs.

Since the reflexive marker cannot occur in combination with any other case, the simplest
and most plausible analysis of it in Modern Tabesj is as a case marker. Tabesj speakers
simply call it the “reflexive case.” The following table illustrates the various uses of the
case.

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 Tabesj

Transitive Intransitive
Reflexive Subject/Object REFL -
Emphatic Subject REFL ; Object ABS Subject REFL
Antipassive Subject REFL; (Object DAT) -
Progressive Subject REFL ; (Object DAT) Subject REFL
Table 1: Paradigms and Confluence of Meaning

Notice the ambiguity. With a transitive verb and a single argument in the reflexive case,
the reflexive, antipassive, and progressive constructions are identical. With a transitive verb
and one argument in reflexive and one in dative, the antipassive and progressive construc-
tions are identical. Whereas with an intransitive verb and the single argument in reflexive,
the emphatic and progressive constructions are identical.

Because of the incompatible case marking, sense verbs do not take on reflexive or associ-
ated uses. Instead, speakers employ periphrastic constructions, like using ker, the non-finite
form of ‘make’ as an adverb to indicate the progressive.

SVO & Nominative­Accusative—Speech Act Participant Presence

One of the characteristics of TT was a heavy importance placed on animacy, sentience,
autonomy, and volition, which had lexical, morphological, and syntactic manifestations.
Almost all of the morphology surrounding animacy has been lost, and most of the syntax as
well, but we still see a remnant of it in the fact that the presence of speech act participants
(SAPs) (i.e. first and second person pronouns) triggers a different word order, SVO, and case
marking paradigm, nominative-accusative, as in (16) and (17).

(16) Kua qorq̇ puolka āgaov ter.

kua qo -rq̇ puolka āgao =v ter
2.NOM listen -PST yesterday music =ACC Q
“Did you listen to yesterday’s music?”

(17) Tjo ṇ dōtax ṇ kate tṛnav.

tjo ṇ dōta =x ṇ kate tṛna =v
POSS 1 garden =LOC 1.NOM eat apple =ACC
“I eat (an) apple in my garden.”

In reality, this is simply the only construction in Tabesj that never changed from the way
sentences were ordered and marked in TT. The high animacy of first and second person
pronouns blocked sentences using them from being passivized as often as sentences without
them. Thus it is one of the rare places where, for most speakers, the finite verb marker ta is
not used, as it came from the passive marker once the passive construction was reanalyzed,
as well as the only place we still see the accusative marker -v.

It may seem like this would be an often-used construction, but in fact it is quite rare for a
couple reasons.

First, verbs that trigger the SVO nominative-accusative paradigm are of a closed, albeit
large, class. Verbs formed by currently productive derivational processes, as well as verbs
loaned from foreign languages, are not part of that class. Compare the verb qo ‘to listen’ in

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(16) which triggers the paradigm, with a verbal construction derived from the same verb in
(18), which doesn’t. Also compare the older kate ‘to eat’ in (17) which triggers the paradigm,
with the loaned verb vesje ‘to plant, to sow’ in (19), which doesn’t.

(18) Kuar puolka āgao javqosarq̇ ter.

Kua =r puolka āgao jav -qo -ta -rq̇ ter
2 =ERG yesterday music.ABS be.in.resulting.state -listen -FIN -PST Q
“Did you feel different after listening to yesterday’s music?”
(19) Tjo ṇ dōtax nar qexa vesjesa.
tjo ṇ dōta =x ṇ =r qexa vesje-ta
POSS 1 garden =LOC 1 =ERG potato.ABS plant -FIN
“I plant potato(es) in my garden.”

Secondly, a general trend in Tabesj of using honorifics undermined the use of true first
and second person pronouns. Honorifics align closely with a rigid caste system, and the
caste identifiers can substitute for pronouns of any person in most contexts. Even though
honorifics are currently able to function pronominally, they came etymologically from non-
pronominal sources, and thus do not trigger this paradigm. Compare the examples in (16)
and (17), which use second and first person pronouns and trigger the paradigm, with the
examples in (21) and (20), which use honorific caste pronouns and don’t.

(20) Pṇtuonar puolka āgao qorq̇ ter.

pṇtuon =r puolka āgao qo -rq̇ ter
HON.2 =ERG yesterday song.ABS listen -FIN Q
“Did you listen to yesterday’s music?”
Or: “Did the honored one listen to yesterday’s music?”
(21) Tjo ṇ dōtax esjtāsṛ qexa vesjesa.
tjo ṇ dōta =x esj -tās =r qexa vesje -ta
POSS 1 garden =LOC 1 -HON =ERG potato.ABS plant -FIN
“I plant potato(es) in my garden.”

When a sense verb has a SAP as an argument, word order remains SOV, because in all
cases, the subject of a sense verb is considered to have low or no volition. On the other
hand, a SAP will change the ordering of a reflexive construction, resulting in SVO with the
subject in reflexive and the object in absolutive or dative.

Conclusion
My conlanging process is usually something along these lines: Get inspiration for a new
language, begin work on that language, study linguistic topics that I didn’t know too much
about before, realize the work I’ve done is rendered unsatisfying by my new knowledge,
start over with a new language. So Tabesj is destined to be just another in a long line of
abandoned conlangs. Nevertheless, since it’s my latest, I’m currently having a great time
with it. I’ve learned a ton about ergative alignment and created what I think is a pleasingly
baroque system of case marking, and what I hope is a naturalistic explanation of its origins.

Kua konṛ tāsa. Pae rases!—Thank you for reading. Until next time!

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 Analyzing Phrasal and
17 Clausal Anaphora
Hiding Waters
in

by Trailsend

When Morphosyntax is Weird

Hiding Waters features peculiar morphosyntactic behaviors that may be best analyzed
without differentiating between nouns and verbs. This article explores constructions of
varying complexity to see how they impact that analysis.

Hiding Waters is an a priori artlang - in particular, it is a fictional language created as part

of a fictional setting — but it moonlights as something of an engineered language as well,
where I play with the relationship between perception and language, and some far flung
ideas about possibilities in morphosyntax. Particularly relevant to this issue of Segments,
for many years I’ve been playing with what it would look like for Hiding Waters to lack a
morphosyntactic distinction between nouns and verbs.

I want to slow down here to unpack precisely what I’m talking about, because the statement
as I intend it is fairly strong.

In many conversations about noun/verb distinctions, what’s being discussed are the lex-
ical categories “noun” and “verb,” and questions about whether a particular language has
them. The Salishan language family often comes up, as some have claimed (and others have
disputed) that some Salishan languages have no lexical distinction between nouns and verbs.

This claim is, to greatly oversimplify, based on the observation that in many constructions
in these languages, any content word may be used as either a predicate or as an argument.
This differs from languages like English, where a certain family of lexical items (“nouns”)
may only be used as arguments, while another family (“verbs”) may only be used as pred-
icates. Those who contest the Salishan claim point out that if you look closely at more
complex constructions, you will find places where indeed only certain lexical items may be
used as the predicate, and these constructions can be used to differentiate between “noun”
and “verb” lexical items.

This is not, however, the kind of distinction that I argue Hiding Waters lacks. The Salishan
discussion orbits around the question of whether particular words can be used as predicates

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 Hiding Waters

or used as arguments in various constructions—which is a conversation we can only have

because the morphosyntactic behavior of those constructions lets us identify which parts are
being used as predicates and which parts are being used as arguments.

However, more than just a lexical noun/verb distinction, Hiding Waters makes no distinc-
tion in morphosyntactic behavior between nouns and verbs. There is no meaningful way, I
argue, to look at a Hiding Waters sentence and say “Yes, you can see that this word is being
used as the verb, and this word is being used as a noun.”

(This is undoubtedly a foolish endeavor, as no natural language to my knowledge works

this way, and for good reason—it eliminates a massive possibility space for useful syntactic
constructions. But when one has already decided to invent a language, something being a
foolish endeavor is clearly not going to stop one.)

I should be clear that because my claim is about the morphosyntactic behavior of Hiding
Waters, it is insufficient to talk about how I, or any of Hiding Waters’ fictional speakers,
think about the language, or would choose to translate particular words into English. It’s
not enough to say, “Well, I don’t think of that word as a noun, because it literally translates
as ‘being-a-whatever’.” Rather, for my claim to work, it must be the case that any mor-
phosyntactic analysis of Hiding Waters that does posit “noun” or “verb” roles must make
arbitrary distinctions that don’t add meaningfully to the analysis. An analysis that posits no
such differentiation must be the most elegant and effective description one can find.

Maybe it sounds funny to be talking about analyzing a conlang’s behavior the way we
analyze that of a natural language. After all, as the language’s creator, don’t I have the final
say in how the language works? I don’t think so. Or at least, not quite. In my view, my
prerogative as creator is to be the authority on what sentences are and are not grammatical
in Hiding Waters, and what those sentences mean (that is, in what situations they could
be used, and what communicative function they would serve). In other words, as Hiding
Waters’ creator, I get to create data. No one else gets to say, “Actually, in Hiding Waters,
this is how you would say it.”

But once I’ve produced that data, I don’t get to say, by authorial fiat, what the best analysis
of that data is. If someone finds a better description of what the language is doing than what
I intended... then that’s the best description of how the language works. (Until I alter or
add new data that makes the description no longer fit, of course.)

I love working this way. It means I am always breaking things, always having to think
about other possible explanations. Always having to work out what kinds of evidence might
prove or disprove this-or-that analysis. And doing all that, while finessing the data toward
an absolutely buck-wild morphosyntactic analysis, while also trying to keep the language
expressive and feasibly usable? It’s been just an entire bucket of fun.

So. With that groundwork laid, the aim of this article is to lay out some rudimentary
evidence for Hiding Waters’ lack of a noun/verb distinction from simple constructions, and
then, to investigate some more complicated constructions—namely, anaphoric references to
phrases and clauses—and explore how they might challenge the “no noun/verb distinction”
analysis.

Uniformity of predicate behavior in simple clauses

In my analysis of Hiding Waters, there is a single lexical category of semantically-heavy
content words, which I call “predicates.” All predicates in a sentence have the same mor-

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phological structure, and exhibit uniform syntactic behavior.

Consider this statement involving an action with both an agent and a patient:

(1) xịlhtuṇguklkịq tulhṇgụqạ hulhlkịjunaụ̀wh

xịlht_q2 ⟨u -ṇg -u -k -lk -ị ⟩
bitten LD.IND -PRED -A.LD -PFV -M -P.FOL
t_qạ ⟨u -lh -ṇg -ụ ⟩
bear LD.IND -ESS -PRED -P.LD
h_naụ̀wh ⟨u -lh -lk -ị -j ⟨u ⟩⟩
cousin LD.IND -ESS -M -P.FOL -1 LOC.LD
“A bear bit my cousin.”
lit. “the [dangerous animal] bit [him], the [dangerous animal] is a bear, [he] is my
cousin”

A first-glance interpretation of this construction is that it is a straightforward transitive

clause with VSO word order. However, as I’ll show below, it’s better understood as three
serialized predicates, each providing further information about various members of a pool
of referents.

The VSO basic word ordering is the easiest to refute. The order of predicates in a clause
is determined by their relative “newsworthiness” (a term I’m borrowing from Marianne
Mithun’s analysis of Cayuga, Coos, and Ngandi3 ): more newsworthy predicates come first,
and less newsworthy predicates come later. A predicate is more newsworthy if it introduces
a new topic, or if the speaker finds it surprising, or wishes to stress it. In (1), the most
newsworthy piece of information is that someone was bitten by a dangerous animal. But
any of the other five possible orderings of these constituents are just as likely; for example:

(2) tulhṇgụqạ hulhlkịjunaụ̀wh xịlhtuṇguklkịq

t_qạ ⟨u -lh -ṇg -ụ ⟩
bear LD.IND -ESS -PRED -P.LD
h_naụ̀wh ⟨u -lh -lk -ị -j ⟨ u ⟩⟩
cousin LD.IND -ESS -M -P.FOL -1 LOC.LD
xịlht_q ⟨u -ṇg -u -k -lk -ị ⟩
bitten LD.IND -PRED -A.LD -PFV -M -P.FOL
“A bear(!!) bit my cousin(!)”
lit. “the [dangerous animal] is a bear, [he] is my cousin, the [dangerous animal] bit
[him]”

In (2), the most newsworthy piece of information is that the thing that bit my cousin was
a bear.

2
An underscore _ in a root indicates the location where the <infix> will be inserted
3
Mithun, M. (1992). “Is Basic Word Order Universal?” In D. Payne (Ed.), Pragmatics of Word Order Flexibility
(pp. 15-62). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

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 Hiding Waters

(3) hulhlkịjunaụ̀wh tulhṇgụqạ xịlhtuṇguklkịq

h_naụ̀wh ⟨u -lh -lk -ị -j ⟨ u ⟩⟩
cousin LD.IND -ESS -M -P.FOL -1 LOC.LD
t_qạ ⟨u -lh -ṇg -ụ ⟩
bear LD.IND -ESS -PRED -P.LD
xịlht_q ⟨ u -ṇg -u -k -lk -ị ⟩
bitten LD.IND -PRED -A.LD -PFV -M -P.FOL
“A bear(!) bit my cousin(!!)”
lit. “[he] is my cousin, the [dangerous animal] is a bear, the [dangerous animal] bit
[him]”

In (3), the most newsworthy piece of information is that the person who got bitten by the
bear was my cousin.

The semantic roles of the various players in the scene—that is, who did the biting, and who
got bitten—are indicated not by placement within the clause, but via classifier agreement.
Predicates may be marked with a classifier affix referencing an agent, and another classifier
affix referencing a patient. The agent classifier of ‘the [dangerous animal] bit [him]’ (-ṇg- ‘a
competitive predator’) is the same as the patient classifier of ‘the [dangerous animal] is a bear,’
while the patient classifier of the first predicate (-lk- ‘a male animal or person’) is the same
as the patient classifier of ‘[he] is my cousin’ — thus, we know that the thing which is a bear
is also the thing which did the biting, and the thing which is my cousin is also the thing that
got bitten.

Agent and patient marking on any given predicate is always optional. If a particular root
semantically requires an agent (or patient), the corresponding marking may still be omitted
if the referent is unknown or irrelevant. This fact, combined with the ability to highlight
certain constituents through newsworthiness marking, gives speakers the same channels
of expressiveness that other languages might achieve through passive-voice structures —
which means there are no active/passive voice alternations we can use to distinguish verb
constituents from noun constituents.

(The details of the classifier system are not relevant to this article, but I will mention that
the system is more flexible than what are typically called “classifier” systems in other lan-
guages. A great number of classifiers are available, and several are applicable to any given
referent. Classifiers are assigned to referents via particular pragmatic structures as they enter
the conversation, and these assignments can be chosen to avoid ambiguity. Thus, classifier
references are usually sufficient to disambiguate who is doing what in the sentence.)

It is tempting here to say that perhaps these classifier affixes are Hiding Waters’ missing
nouns, but it’s cumbersome to analyze them as anything other than bound morphemes. For
sake of brevity I won’t include that argument here, but suffice it to say, they fail a host of
constituency tests, such as being unexpandable into phrases.

One could argue that this classifier agreement is itself a form of subject/object marking.
We could propose the following analysis:

The first (most newsworthy) predicate in a clause is the “verb.” The subsequent
predicate whose patient agrees with the verb’s agent is the “subject,” and the
subsequent predicate whose patient agrees with the verb’s patient is the “object.”

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 This analysis doesn’t yield especially interesting results, however, and produces a lot of
edge cases that have to be accounted for.

For example, subsequent predicates describing an agent or patient are never obligatory.
Indeed, none of the predicates in (1) are obligatory:

(4) xịlhtuṇguklkịq tulhṇgụqạ

xịlht_q ⟨ u -ṇg -u -k -lk -ị ⟩
bitten LD.IND -PRED -A.LD -PFV -M -P.FOL
t_qạ ⟨u -lh -ṇg -ụ ⟩
bear LD.IND -ESS -PRED -P.LD
“A bear bit [him].”
lit. “the [dangerous animal] bit [him], the [dangerous animal] is a bear”

(5) xịlhtuṇguklkịq hulhlkịjunaụ̀wh

xịlht_q ⟨ u -ṇg -u -k -lk -ị ⟩
bitten LD.IND -PRED -A.LD -PFV -M -P.FOL
h_naụ̀wh ⟨u -lh -lk -ị -j ⟨ u ⟩⟩
cousin LD.IND -ESS -M -P.FOL -1 LOC.LD
“A [dangerous animal] bit my cousin.”
lit. “the [dangerous animal] bit [him], [he] is my cousin”

(6) tulhṇgụqạ hulhlkịjunaụ̀wh

t_qạ ⟨u -lh -ṇg -ụ ⟩
bear LD.IND -ESS -PRED -P.LD
h_naụ̀wh ⟨u -lh -lk -ị -j ⟨ u ⟩⟩
cousin LD.IND -ESS -M -P.FOL -1 LOC.LD
“The one is a bear and the other is my cousin.”
lit. “the [dangerous animal] is a bear, [he] is my cousin”

This last example, (6), sounds somewhat peculiar, but for pragmatic reasons rather than
reasons of ungrammaticality. One might find a sentence like this at the beginning of a story
to establish characters and assign classifiers, or as an answer to a question:

(7) uá xịlhtiṇguklkịq hixkịsukwh tí?

uá xịlht_q ⟨ u -ṇg -u -k -lk -ị ⟩
DP bitten LD.IND -PRED -A.LD -PFV -M -P.FOL
‘(surprise), the [dangerous animal] bit [him]’
h_kwh ⟨i -x -k -ị -s ⟨u ⟩⟩ tí
knowing FOL.IND -STAT -2 -P.FOL -AUX LOC.LD.IND Q
‘you know that, (yes or no?)’
“Did you know that [someone] got bitten [by a dangerous animal]?”

(8) saù, tulhṇgụqạ hulhlkịjunaụ̀wh

saù t_qạ ⟨ u -lh -ṇg -ụ ⟩
AFF.LD bear LD.IND -ESS -PRED -P.LD
‘yes, the [dangerous animal] is a bear’

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 Hiding Waters

h_naụ̀wh ⟨ u -lh -lk -ị -j ⟨u ⟩⟩

cousin LD.IND -ESS -M -P.FOL -1 LOC.LD
‘[he] is my cousin’
“Yes, it was a bear, and it was my cousin.”

When subsequent predicates are provided, there is not necessarily a “predicate whose
patient agrees with the verb’s agent.”

(9) xịlhtuṇguklkịq kuṇguxtlhọtlhḳotlhtẹ hulhlkịjunaụ̀wh

xịlht_q ⟨ u -ṇg -u -k -lk -ị ⟩
bitten LD.IND -PRED -A.LD -PFV -M -P.FOL
‘the [dangerous animal] bit [him]’
k_tẹ ⟨ u -ṇg -ụ -x -tlhọtlhḳ_tlh ⟨ o ⟩⟩
go LD.IND -PRED -A.LD -STAT -forest LOC.INAN
‘the [dangerous animal] was traveling in the woods
h_naụ̀w ⟨ u -lh -lk -ị -j ⟨ u ⟩⟩
cousin LD.IND -ESS -M -P.FOL -1 LOC.LD
‘[he] is my cousin
“A [dangerous animal] that was walking in the woods bit my cousin.”

In (9), like in (1), there is an additional predicate describing the animal that bit the
speaker’s cousin, but it marks the animal as an agent rather than a patient. (Note also
how, while English must use a specialized relative-clause construction to embed the verb
phrase “(it) was walking in the woods” in a noun phrase, in Hiding Waters the structure of
(9) is precisely the same as in (1).)

In light of (9), we could modify our proposed analysis to say that a subsequent predicate
with an agent OR patient that agrees with the first predicate’s agent is its “subject,” and
therefore a “noun.” For this description to be useful, we would expect the “noun” predicate
to exhibit some different morphosyntactic behavior than the “verb” predicate—but in fact,
other predicates interact with the “noun” in the same way that the “noun” interacts with
the “verb”:

(10) xịlhtuṇguklkịq tulhṇgụqạ xụlqukuxṇgụq hulhlkịjunaụ̀wh

xịlht_q ⟨ u -ṇg -u -k -lk -ị ⟩
bitten LD.IND -PRED -A.LD -PFV -M -P.FOL
‘the [animal] bit [him]’
t_qạ ⟨ u -lh -ṇg -ụ ⟩
bear LD.IND -ESS -PRED -P.LD
‘the [animal] is a bear’
xụlq_q ⟨ u -k -u -x -ṇg -ụ ⟩
hunt LD.IND -2 -LD.A -STAT -PRED -P.LD
‘you were hunting the [animal]’
h_naụ̀wh ⟨ u -lh -lk -ị -j ⟨u ⟩⟩
cousin LD.IND -ESS -M -P.FOL -1 LOC.LD
‘[he] is my cousin’
“The bear that you were hunting bit my cousin.”

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 The structural relationship between the predicate ‘you were hunting [the dangerous animal]’
and the predicate ‘[the dangerous animal] is a bear’ is identical to the relationship between
the predicate ‘[the dangerous animal] is a bear’ and the predicate ‘a [dangerous animal] bit
[him].’ Thus, on this front, nothing is gained by positing that ‘[a dangerous animal] bit [him]’
and ‘[the dangerous animal] is a bear’ are different kinds of morphosyntactic entities.

There are other forms of evidence which, for brevity, I am not describing fully here. For
example, any predicate may form a phrase with quantifiers, demonstratives, and other func-
tion words. If “a subsequent predicate with an agent or patient that agrees with the first
predicate’s agent” was a distinct kind of morphosyntactic entity, or if a particular predicate
could somehow be identified as the sentence’s “verb,” we might expect that certain kinds
of predicate phrases could only replace predicates in certain positions. However, this is not
the case. All predicates in a sentence behave uniformly with respect to predicate phrase
expansions. The morphological structure, too, is exactly the same in all the predicates in
(1-10).

In order to account for this behavior, an analysis that seeks to differentiate between
“nouns” and “verbs” must become increasingly baroque, but for all that complexity, it does
no better job of describing (1-10) than an analysis that makes no such distinction:

Discourse referents are identified by classifier morphemes, and a clause consists

of predicate phrases which describe those referents, appearing in decreasing or-
der of newsworthiness.

However, we know from the Salishan debate that what appears absent in simple construc-
tions may manifest in more complex ones. We may need to look at sentences with more
complex structure to find behaviors we could use to differentiate between nouns and verbs.

Phrasal anaphora
Making a distinction between nouns and verbs grants a language a tremendous degree of
expressivity, because it allows for taking an entire verb phrase, transforming it into a noun
phrase, and then using that entire phrase as an argument of another verb. For example, we
can take the verb phrase ‘go to the movies,’ transform it into a noun phrase, and use it as the
object of a verb, as in “I like going to the movies.” Or, you could use it as a subject: “Going to
the movies is fun.”

The mechanisms in Hiding Waters discussed so far cannot accomplish this. Classifier
agreement can show that the patient of a less-newsworthy predicate and the agent of a
more-newsworthy predicate are the same object, but it does not provide a way for an entire
predicate phrase to be referenced by another.

For the “no noun/verb distinction” analysis to work, it must be able to elegantly and
effectively account for sentences like these:

(11) ṭȧnȯlkusquọ́qotsilhti
̣̀ lujussustẹ hulhlkịkunaụ̀wh
ṭȧn_ti ⟨ ȯ -lk -u -s -quọ́q_tsilh
̣̀ ⟨o ⟩⟩
dance LD.SBJV -M -A.LD -IPFV -festival LOC.INAN
‘[he] would dance at the festival’

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 Hiding Waters

l_stẹ ⟨u -j -u -s -s ⟨u ⟩⟩
saying LD.IND -1 -LD.A -IPFV -AUX LOC.LD
‘I was talking about that’
h_naụ̀wh ⟨ u -lh -lk -ị -k ⟨u ⟩⟩
cousin LD.IND -ESS -M -P.FOL -2 LOC.LD
‘[he] is your cousin’
“I was talking about your cousin dancing at the festival.”

(12) dịjȯq̇ạḷ́ ïxtẹstẹ sirȯlhtsụq

̣̀
dịj_tẹ ⟨ȯ -q̇ạḷ́ _xtẹ ⟨ï ⟩ -s ⟩
traverse LD.SBJV -mountain_pass VIA.FOL -IPFV
‘were the mountain pass traversed’
s_ ⟨ i ̣̀ ⟩ -r_tsụq ⟨ ȯ -lh ⟩
AUX ABL.FOL -danger LD.SBJV -ESS
‘because of that, there would be danger’
“Traversing the pass is dangerous.”

(13) u̇ng sukngolịt sàu sukṭolịt hujuktlhsụ́

u̇ng s ⟨u -k -ng_lịt ⟨o ⟩⟩
NEG.LD AUX LD.IND -PFV -tomorrow LOC.INAN
‘not, it happens tomorrow’
sàu s ⟨u -k -ṭ_lịt ⟨o ⟩⟩
AFF.LD AUX LD.IND -PFV -today LOC.INAN
‘yes, it happens today’
h_tlh ⟨u -j -u -k ⟩ -s ⟨ ụ́ ⟩
choose LD.IND -1 -LD.A -PFV -AUX LAT.LD
‘I chose in order for that to happen
“I chose to do it today rather than tomorrow.”

Analyzing these constructions requires some background about two important grammati-
cal mechanisms: root incorporation and anaphoric roots.

Root incorporation is the primary mechanism of derivation in Hiding Waters. Predicate

roots may be embedded into another fully-inflected predicate at a number of sites, each
with different meanings. For instance, a root may be incorporated at the LATIVE position
to indicate a destination, result, or goal.

(14) kujuxtẹ
k_tẹ ⟨u -j -u -x ⟩
go LD.IND -1 -LD.A -STAT
“I am going.”

(15) kujuxtẹlhọ́sn
k_tẹ ⟨u -j -u -x ⟩ -lh_sn ⟨ ọ́ ⟩
go LD.IND -1 -LD.A -STAT -small_river lat.inan
“I am going to the river.”

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(16) kujuxtẹxụlqụ́q
k_tẹ ⟨ u -j -u -x ⟩ -xụlq_tẹ ⟨ ụ́ ⟩
go LD.IND -1 -LD.A -STAT -hunt LAT.LD
“I am going to hunt.”

(Note that, by a similar argument to the one given above for classifier morphemes, in-
corporated roots must be analyzed as bound morphemes on the predicate, not independent
constituents themselves.)

There are four available incorporation sites in a predicate, each of which may contain up
to one incorporated root:

• ABLATIVE (ABL): origin, source, or cause

• VIALIS (VIA): route, manner, or duration
• LOCATIVE (LOC): location, topic, or point in time
• LATIVE (LAT): destination, result, or goal

Anaphoric roots are a closed class of lexical items which refer to other predicate phrases
or clauses in specialized ways. These include:

• s*: a generic reference to another phrase or clause

• s*wh: a reference to the manner in which another phrase or clause happens
• s*tlh: a reference to the time at which another phrase or clause happens
• s*kwh: a reference to the place at which another phrase or clause happens

(Notational note: words containing asterisks like s* and s*wh are the uninflected “dictio-
nary forms” of particular roots.)

We can see how these systems interact in (11-13) to produce instances of phrasal anaphora:
structures in which an incorporated anaphoric root in one predicate refers to some other
predicate phrase.

(11) ṭȧnȯlkusquọ́qotsilhti
̣̀ lujussustẹ hulhlkụkunaụ̀wh
ṭȧn_ti ⟨ ȯ -lk -u -s -quọ́q_tsilh
̣̀ ⟨o ⟩⟩
dance LD.SBJV -M -A.LD -IPFV -festival LOC.INAN
‘[he] would dance at the festival’
l_stẹ ⟨u -j -u -s -s ⟨u ⟩⟩
saying LD.IND -1 -LD.A -IPFV -AUX LOC.LD
‘I was talking about that’
h_naụ̀wh ⟨ u -lh -lk -ụ -k ⟨ u ⟩⟩
cousin LD.IND -ESS -M -P.FOL -2 LOC.LD
‘[he] is your cousin’
“I was talking about your cousin dancing at the festival.”

The first predicate describes the listener’s cousin hypothetically dancing at the festival;
the second describes the speaker talking, and embeds a generic anaphoric reference (-su-,
highlighted in the gloss) to the first predicate as a locative argument to indicate the topic of
conversation.

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 Hiding Waters

(12) dịjȯq̇ạḷ́ ïxtẹstẹ sirȯlhtsụq

̣̀
dịj_tẹ ⟨ ȯ- q̇ạḷ́ _xtẹ ⟨ï ⟩ -s ⟩
traverse LD.SBJV- mountain_pass VIA.FOL -IPFV
‘were the mountain pass traversed’
s ⟨ i ̣̀ ⟩- r_tsụq ⟨ ȯ -lh ⟩
AUX ABL.FOL - danger LD.SBJV -ESS
‘because of that, there would be danger’
“Traversing the pass is dangerous.”

The first predicate describes the hypothetical act of traversing the pass, and the second
describes a hypothetical presence of danger, incorporating a generic anaphoric reference to
the first as an ablative argument indicating a cause (-si-).
̣̀

We can contrast this with more concrete statements about dangerous things, in which
the thing that is dangerous is referenced not with an ablative argument, but with a patient
classifier morpheme:

(17) tȯlhṇgụqạ rȯlhṇgụtsụq

t_qạ ⟨ ȯ- lh- ṇg- ụ ⟩
bear LD.SBJV- ESS- PRED- P.LD
‘were the [animal] a bear’
r_tsụq ⟨ ȯ- lh- ṇg- ụ ⟩
danger LD.SBJV- ESS- PRED- P.LD
‘the [animal] would be dangerous’
“Bears are dangerous.”

(17) strikes a much closer structural resemblance to sentences like (1) than it does to (12).
Since the “dangerous animals” are a discourse referent with an associated classifier, they
can be further referenced via classifier agreement (with -ṇg-) on later predicates. However,
“traversing the pass” is not a discourse referent and has no associated classifier, so it must
be referenced by incorporated roots instead.

Interestingly, there is not a straightforward mapping between these two situations. For
instance, while in (12) what would otherwise be marked as a patient is instead incorporated
as an ablative argument, it is not always the case that ablative arguments replace patients,
as we see in (13):

(13) u̇ng sukngolịt sàu sukṭolịt hujuktlhsụ́

u̇ng s ⟨u -k -ng_lịt ⟨o ⟩⟩
NEG.LD AUX LD.IND -PFV -tomorrow LOC.INAN
‘not, it happens tomorrow’
sàu s ⟨u -k -ṭ_lịt ⟨o ⟩⟩
AFF.LD AUX LD.IND -PFV -today LOC.INAN
‘yes, it happens today’
h_tlh ⟨u -j -u -k ⟩ -s ⟨ ụ́ ⟩
choose LD.IND -1 -LD.A -PFV -AUX LAT.LD
‘I chose in order for that to happen
“I chose to do it today rather than tomorrow.”

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 This contrasts similarly with more concrete statements where classifier agreement is avail-
able:

(18) tulhṇgụqạ hujukṇgụtlh

t_qạ ⟨ u -lh -ṇg -ụ ⟩
bear LD.IND -ESS -PRED -P.LD
‘the [dangerous animal] is a bear’
h_tlh ⟨u -j -u -k -ṇg -ụ ⟩
choose LD.IND -1 -LD.A -PFV -PRED -P.LD
‘I chose the [dangerous animal]’
“I chose the bear.”

In (18), the bear is a discourse referent with an associated classifier, which is then included
as the patient on the predicate “I chose”. However, in (13), the predicate “I chose” marks no
patient at all, and instead incorporates an anaphoric reference to the other predicate phrase
as a lative argument indicating a result or goal (-sụ́).

In this regard, we have uncovered distinct sets of morphosyntactic behavior! We might

observe the following:

Certain predicates can be referenced by other predicates via classifier agreement,

but:
Other predicates can only be referenced via incorporated anaphoric roots.

Conceivably, we might even be able to use this difference as the basis for a noun/verb
distinction. We could propose the following:

In Hiding Waters, the “nouns” of a sentence are those predicates which can be referenced
by classifier agreement, while “verbs” are those predicates which can be referenced only by
incorporated anaphoric roots.

This would fit well with intuition from English, which holds that in sentences like (17) and
(18), the argument of the verb seems to be a noun, while in sentences like (12) and (13),
the argument of the verb seems to be a nominalized verb phrase.

But once again, this idea runs into challenges and is ultimately unsatisfying.

We still have the problem that the posited distinction doesn’t seem to produce other ob-
servations of interest. If predicates referenceable by classifier agreement are “nouns”, and
predicates referenceable by anaphoric roots are “verbs”, we might expect them to exhibit
some distinct behavior when it comes to morphological structure, newsworthiness order-
ing, or the kinds of phrases they can form with quantifiers or demonstratives. But no such
differences manifest.

Perhaps more problematically, this analysis conflicts with data where a predicate can be
referenced in both ways. Refer again to example (11):

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 Hiding Waters

(11) ṭȧnȯlkusquọ́qotsilhti
̣̀ lujussustẹ hulhlkụkunaụ̀wh
ṭȧn_ti ⟨ ȯ -lk -u -s -quọ́q_tsilh
̣̀ ⟨o ⟩⟩
dance LD.SBJV -M -A.LD -IPFV -festival LOC.INAN
‘[he] would dance at the festival’
l_stẹ ⟨u -j -u -s -s ⟨u ⟩⟩
saying LD.IND -1 -LD.A -IPFV -AUX LOC.LD
‘I was talking about that’
h_naụ̀wh ⟨ u -lh -lk -ụ -k ⟨u ⟩⟩
cousin LD.IND -ESS -M -P.LD -2 LOC.LD
‘[he] is your cousin’
“I was talking about your cousin dancing at the festival.”

The first predicate, describing the cousin’s hypothetical performance at the festival, is
first referenced by the second predicate via an incorporated anaphoric root -su-, but then
referenced by the third predicate via classifier agreement on the -lk- “male” classifier. Using
our provisional framework, should we classify the first predicate as a noun or as a verb?

We might resolve the paradox by saying that we can still classify the first predicate as a
verb, because it isn’t really being referenced by the third predicate—rather, the relationship
goes the other way around. It is referencing the third predicate by classifier agreement,
which indicates the third predicate is a noun.

This is promising, and fits well into the familiar idea that the third predicate, a noun, is an
argument of the first predicate, a verb. However, this niceness is really just due to the fact
that only one predicate in the sentence exhibited both classifier-agreement and anaphoric-
reference behavior, which meant we could analyze that predicate as the “main verb” and
point all the classifier-agreement references away from it rather than toward it. But we can
find other examples where this is not the case:

(19) ṭȧnȯlkusquọ́qotsilhti
̣̀ lujussustẹ hukkụtlhọtlhḳotlhwhtṭụ́lk lusu̇kukstẹ
ṭȧn_ti ⟨ ȯ -lk -u -s -quọ́q_tsilh
̣̀ ⟨o ⟩⟩
dance LD.SBJV -M -A.LD -IPFV -festival LOC.INAN
‘[he] would dance at the festival’
l_stẹ ⟨u -j -u -s -s ⟨u ⟩⟩
saying LD.IND -1 -LD.A -IPFV -AUX LOC.LD
‘I was talking about that’
h_wht ⟨u -k -k -ụ -tlhọtlhḳ_tlh ⟨o ⟩ ⟩ -ṭ_lk ⟨ ụ́ ⟩
encounter LD.IND -PFV -2 -P.LD -forest LOC.INAN -M LAT.LD
‘you met [him] in the woods’
l_stẹ ⟨u -s ⟨ u̇ ⟩ -k -u -k ⟩
saying LD.IND -AUX VIA.LD -2 -LD.A -PFV
‘you said as much’
“I was talking about [the man] that you said you met in the woods dancing at the
festival.”

Here, “you met [him] in the woods” has a classifier-agreement relationship with “[he] would
dance at the festival” via the -lk- “male” classifier. According to our proposed framework, we

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should say that ‘‘you met [him] in the woods” is therefore a noun, and an argument of “[he]
would dance at the festival.”

But “you met [him] in the woods” is also referenced by the incorporated anaphoric root in
“you said as much,” which our proposed analysis says should make it a verb. We could try to
untangle this knot by positing that some kind of nominalizing process is in play, by which
the verb phrase “you said that you met [him] in the woods” is rendered into a noun phrase
which “[he] would dance at the festival” can reference via classifier agreement.

But this supposed nominalizing process doesn’t seem to leave any tracks. No other mark-
ings indicating it are evident, no changes in phrase-ordering, no specialized syntactic struc-
tures. It merely exhibits both classifier-agreement, and incorporated-root anaphora. Includ-
ing it in our analysis adds complexity, with no benefit.

(There is one more quick but informative observation to make about (19): both the “I
was talking about that” and “you said as much” predicates contain incorporated anaphoric
roots, but these anaphoric roots refer to two different predicates. How does the speaker
know what refers to what? There is morphological marking that, in some cases, provides a
hint via “stance agreement”, which is discussed more in the next section. But generally, the
reference is resolved contextually, much like how the antecedent of a pronoun is determined.
As with pronouns, if context is insufficient to work out what a particular anaphoric root
refers to, speakers may break up the sentence, or find a way to reword their statement in a
less ambiguous way.)

Finally, the theory that nouns are identifiable as the targets of classifier agreement requires
us to account for sentences like (4) and (5), where there is no predicate to serve as the target
of agreement. We might posit that in such constructions, the noun is structurally present,
but unstated. However, again, we are having to posit invisible entities that leave no tracks
in the data, and we don’t appear to gain any additional descriptive power by doing so.

A simpler accounting is just that the observed difference between classifier-agreement

reference and incorporated-anaphoric-root reference has nothing to do with a difference in
morphosyntactic types, but is rather indicative of a difference in the kind of reference being
made. Namely:

Classifier agreement is used to reference a specific element within the predicate,

such as its agent or patient, while incorporated anaphoric roots are used to ref-
erence the whole idea described by the phrase or clause in its entirety.

This framing handles the data that troubled the noun/verb analysis seamlessly.

• The fact that predicates can consistently form all the same kinds of phrases regardless
of what kinds of references are made to them is unsurprising; after all, they are just
predicates.
• The first and third predicates in (11) do not refer to each other so much as they both
refer to the same external object: namely, a certain male person, who is your cousin,
and who will also perhaps be dancing at the festival.
• The second predicate in (11) incorporates an anaphoric root not because the first pred-
icate is a verb, but because the speaker was not just talking about the listener’s cousin,
or just about the festival—they were talking about the entire idea of the cousin dancing
at the festival. A similar accounting works for the anaphora in (19).

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 Hiding Waters

• We need not posit any unstated or implied constituents in sentences (4) and (5). They
both merely make reference to a particular discourse referent about which nothing
more needs to be said.

Clausal Anaphora
I’ve made a few references thus far to “phrases” and “clauses”, but I should pause here
to clarify what I use those terms to mean with regard to Hiding Waters, since they are
somewhat different from the typical definitions.

A phrase (or more verbosely, a “predicate phrase”) is a contiguous constituent headed

by a predicate (or several coordinated predicates), and optionally containing certain other
modifying function words like demonstratives or quantifiers. For example:

(20) nu̇ xịlhtuṇguklkịq tulhṇgụqạ hulhlkịjunaụ̀wh

nu̇ xịlht_q ⟨ u -ṇg -u -k -lk -ị ⟩
VIS bitten LD.IND -PRED -A.LD -PFV -M -P.FOL
‘that the [dangerous animal] bit [him]’
t_qạ ⟨ u -lh -ṇg -ụ ⟩
bear LD.IND -ESS -PRED -P.LD
‘the [dangerous animal] is a bear’
h_naụ̀wh ⟨ u -lh -lk -ị -j ⟨u ⟩⟩
cousin LD.IND -ESS -M -P.FOL -1 LOC.LD
‘[he] is my cousin’
“That bear bit my cousin.”

Here, nu̇ xịlhtuṇguklkịq “that [dangerous animal] bit [him]” is a predicate phrase. Pred-
icate phrases are in a sense finitely contained, since, with the exception of coordination,
there is no opportunity for arbitrarily-deep recursion. You cannot stack arbitrarily many
quantifiers or demonstratives onto a predicate, and so a predicate phrase can typically only
be a few words long.

Clauses, however, are much more expansive. A clause is a series of phrases which form
a prosodic unit, and which typically are bounded by discourse markers - a closed set of
particles which modify the entire clause, usually indicating what purpose the speaker has
for the clause with respect to the broader conversation.

Clauses allow anaphoric references to capture more complex meanings than those rep-
resented by individual predicates. For example, compare these two sentences, the first of
which contains just one clause, while the second contains two:

(21) xngusslọsikwhsq sulkik hė xu̇ sitlhẹlhuxnx

̣̀ na
xng_sq ⟨ u -s -sl -ọ -s_kwh ⟨i ⟩⟩
smoke LD.IND -IPFV -fish -P.INAN -L LOC.FOL
‘fish are being smoked there’
s_ ⟨u -lk -i -k ⟩ hė
AUX LD.IND -M -A.FOL -PFV DEF
‘[he] did it’

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 xu̇ s_ ⟨ i ̣̀ ⟩ -tlhẹlh_nx ⟨u -x ⟩ na
very AUX ABL.FOL -difficult LD.IND -STAT DP
‘very, because of that, it is difficult’
“What he did in the fish-smoking area has made things very difficult.”

(22) xàu xngusslọsikwhsq sulkik hė, dèi xu̇ sitlhẹlhuxnx

̣̀ na
xàu xng_sq ⟨ u -s -sl -ọ -s_kwh ⟨i ⟩⟩
DP smoke LD.IND -IPFV -fish -P.INAN -L LOC.FOL
‘(disgust) fish are being smoked there’
s_ ⟨u -lk -i -k ⟩ hė
AUX LD.IND -M -A.FOL -PFV DEF
‘[he] did it’
dèi xu̇ s_ ⟨ i ̣̀ ⟩ -tlhẹlh_nx ⟨u -x ⟩ na
DP very AUX ABL.FOL -difficult LD.IND -STAT DP
‘(explain), very, so, it is difficult’
“The fact that he did this in the fish-smoking area has made things very difficult.”

In both of these sentences, the predicate “things are difficult” incorporates an anaphoric
reference as an ablative argument, indicating a cause. They differ in that (22) creates a
clausal boundary around “he did this where fish are smoked,” while (21) does not. The result
is that in (22), the cause of the difficulty is the entire situation described by the clause—not
only what he did, but that he did it where the fish are smoked—whereas in (21), the cause
of the difficulty is only the contents of the predicate phrase “he did this.” The fact that it was
done in the fish-smoking area is just an extra newsworthy detail.

Clausal boundaries, in combination with anaphoric references, thus provide another mech-
anism for sentences to express progressively more nuanced meanings. However, they also
introduce some subtle behaviors that are potentially relevant toward finding a way to dif-
ferentiate nouns from verbs.

To show how, we need to discuss incorporated anaphoric roots in a little more detail.
Specifically, we need to talk about stance marking.

Stance is a major grammatical concept in Hiding Waters. The particulars of it are not
relevant to this discussion, except to say that speakers take a particular “stance” toward
each referent in a conversation — either “leading”, “following”, or “inanimate” stance — and
then inflect references (including agent and patient classifier morphemes and incorporated
roots) with the appropriate stance for their referent. This creates agreement relationships
between words that refer to common referents, and these agreement relationships exhibit
some interesting behavior when it comes to phrasal and clausal anaphora.

Part of the riddle of incorporated anaphoric roots is that incorporated roots can only be
inflected for a single stance, but the predicate phrase or clause the anaphor refers to may
involve many referents, each with their own stance toward the speaker.

When this happens, the stance chosen to inflect the incorporated root is the stance of the
most salient element of the referenced phrase or clause. For example:

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 Hiding Waters

(23) xịlhtuṇguklkịq sixàruxlkịng

̣̀
xịlht_q ⟨ u -ṇg -u -k -lk -ị ⟩
bitten LD.IND -PRED -A.LD -PFV -M -P.FOL
‘the [dangerous animal] bit [him]’
s_ ⟨ i ̣̀ ⟩ -xàr_ng ⟨ u -x -lk -ị ⟩
AUX ABL.FOL -angry LD.IND -STAT -M -P.FOL
‘because of that, [he] is angry’
“He is angry because he got bitten by that [dangerous animal].”

(24) xịlhtuṇguklkịq sụ̀xàruxlkịng

xịlht_q ⟨ u -ṇg -u -k -lk -ị ⟩
bitten LD.IND -PRED -A.LD -PFV -M -P.FOL
‘the [dangerous animal] bit [him]’
s_ ⟨ ụ̀ ⟩ -xàr_ng ⟨ u -x -lk -ị ⟩
AUX ABL.LD -angry LD.IND -STAT -M -P.FOL
‘because of that, [he] is angry’
“He is angry because that [dangerous animal] bit him.”

In both (23) and (24), the first predicate “he is angry” incorporates an anaphoric ablative
argument indicating the cause of the hurt. The referent of the anaphor, “he got bitten by
that bear,” contains references to two referents: “he”, toward which the speaker has taken
following stance, and the “dangerous animal,” toward which the speaker has taken leading
stance.

In (23), the incorporated anaphoric root in the first predicate is inflected with following
stance, agreeing with the patient “he” of the referenced phrase. This foregrounds the man
who got bitten, directing the listener’s attention to him and backgrounding the animal that
did the biting.

In contrast, (24) inflects the anaphor to agree with the referenced phrase’s agent. This
highlights the animal, stressing its importance to the speaker’s point and making it more
prominent to the listener.

With this feature in mind, we can make some interesting observations about example (22):

(22) xàu xngusslọsikwhsq sulkik hė, dèi xu̇ sitlhẹlhuxnx

̣̀ na
xàu xng_sq ⟨ u -s -sl -ọ -s_kwh ⟨i ⟩⟩
DP smoke LD.IND -IPFV -fish -P.INAN -L LOC.FOL
‘(disgust) fish are being smoked there’
s_ ⟨u -lk -i -k ⟩ hė
AUX LD.IND -M -A.FOL -PFV DEF
‘[he] did it’
dèi xu̇ s_ ⟨ i ̣̀ ⟩ -tlhẹlh_nx ⟨u -x ⟩ na
DP very AUX ABL.FOL -difficult LD.IND -STAT DP
‘(explain), very, so, it is difficult’
“The fact that he did this in the fish-smoking area has made things very difficult.”

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 With respect to stance marking, clausal anaphora is even trickier than phrasal anaphora,
because there are even more referents with which the incorporated anaphoric root could
agree. In this case, there is the agent of “he did this,” toward which the speaker has taken
following stance, and there is the patient of “fish are smoked there,” toward which the speaker
has taken inanimate stance.

It is interesting, then, that the incorporated anaphor in “because of that, things are very
difficult” is inflected with following stance, rather than inanimate stance. That is, out of all
the predicates in the clause, it chose “he did this” to agree with.

This could maybe serve as a very subtle hint to something like a verb-with-arguments
relationship. If, when predicates incorporate an anaphoric reference to a clause, those ref-
erences agree with a particular predicate within that clause, we could perhaps use this to
say that:

The predicate of a clause with which external clausal anaphora markings agree
is the “root” (or “main verb”) of the clause, and the other predicates in the clause
are subordinate arguments of it.

This analysis still has the problem that without more distinctive behaviors correlated with
this classification — observations about how “root” predicates of clauses behave differently
than “argument” predicates in the clause, for example — it feels like a label that provides
no other service besides existing.

Furthermore, it is contradicted by examples where different anaphoric references to the

same clause agree with different predicates within the clause, such as:

(25) xaù xngusslọsikwhsq sulkik hė, dèi xu̇ sitlhẹlhuxnx

̣̀ na, sì tlhilhoàjkuksoskẹ
̣́
xaù xng_sq ⟨ u -s -sl -ọ -s_kwh ⟨i ⟩⟩
DP smoke LD.IND -IPFV -fish -P.INAN -L LOC.FOL
‘(disgust) fish are being smoked there’
s ⟨u -lk -i -k ⟩ hė
AUX LD.IND -M -A.FOL -PFV DEF
‘[he] did it’
dèi xu̇ s_ ⟨ i ̣̀ ⟩ -tlhẹlh_nx ⟨u -x ⟩ na
DP very S ABL.FOL -difficult LD.IND -STAT DP
‘(explain), very, so, it is difficult’
sì tlhilh_skẹ
̣́ ⟨ oà -jk -u -k -s_ ⟨o ⟩⟩
DP clean LD.OPT -1.INCL -A.LD -PFV -AUX LOC.LD
‘(alas), let’s make that clean’
“The fact that he did this in the fish-smoking area has made things very difficult, we
should clean it up.”

This example is interesting in that it contains two anaphoric references to the “he did this
in the fish cleaning area” clause. The first, an ablative incorporation on “so, it is difficult,” is
marked with “following” stance to agree with the agent of “he did this,” but the second, a
locative incorporation on “let’s make that clean,” is marked with “inanimate” stance to agree
with the patient of “fish are being smoked there.”

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 Hiding Waters

We might try to avoid a contradiction with our hypothesis by saying that the second ref-
erence is not actually an instance of clausal anaphora, but is instead phrasal anaphora,
intended to reference only the predicate phrase “fish are smoked there.” If this were the case,
though, we would expect the speaker to have used the locative anaphoric root s*kwh to
refer just to the location where the fish are prepared, rather than the generic anaphoric
root s*. The fact that they did not suggests that it is not just the place that the speaker is
suggesting they clean up, but everything that was done there — that is, they are referencing
the entire clause.

This complicates the hypothesis that there is a single “root” predicate in a clause with
which outside clausal anaphora will agree, but it is handled elegantly by the same descrip-
tion used for stance agreement in phrasal anaphora: the incorporated anaphoric root agrees
with the most salient referent in the referenced phrase or clause. Here, while the speaker
is still talking about cleaning up everything that the man did in the fish smoking area, they
are shifting their attention away from his actions and toward the fish that need cleaning up.

Conclusion
In the end, differentiating between “nouns” and “verbs” among constituents of Hiding
Waters sentences is unnecessary to adequately describe the language’s morphosyntactic be-
havior, and therefore, analyses that posit such a distinction introduce complexity without
corresponding payoff.

Constituents in simple phrases are best described not as verbs, subjects, and objects, but
as a series of predicates in order of decreasing newsworthiness, incrementally supplying
information about a set of discourse referents using a collection of shared classifiers.

More complex constructions involving references to other phrases and clauses are best de-
scribed not as main-verb/dependent-clause relationships, but rather as anaphoric relation-
ships that are resolved not structurally, but pragmatically (similarly to the way pronouns
resolve their antecedents).

Interesting patterns of behavior do surface around such anaphoric references, such as

stance agreement, and alternations of argument type when incorporating anaphoric roots
(for example, anaphoric references incorporated in ablative position on the root r*tsụq
‘dangerous’ are analogous to classifier morphemes in patient position, but on the root h*tlh
‘chosen’, patient-position classifiers are analogous to lative-position anaphoric references).

However, these behaviors do not provide sufficient evidence for major statements about
underlying structure. The differences in argument type for incorporated anaphora appear
to simply be lexical differences unique to the various roots hosting the incorporation, and
while stance agreement provides a promising avenue for further exploration, in the data
available so far, the choice of target for stance agreement appears to be pragmatic, based
on salience to the speaker, rather than structural.

There are, of course, limitless ways that morphosyntactic differences can manifest, so there
will always be more rocks to turn over, more tracks to follow, more things to try, in the effort
to see if a distinction between nouns and verbs in Hiding Waters can be identified. And that
is just the very best, because no matter where I look, no matter what I find, it’s always some
kind of interesting.

Page 176
 18 The TAM System of Ahale

by Pancake

Who needs morphology anyway?

Ahale is an a priori personal artlang, phonoaesthetically inspired by Hawaiian and Taga-

log1 . Ahale is the product of my attempts to create a language with minimal inflectional
morphology, as I feel I’d been relying on it too much in the past. I’ve been working on Ahale
since March of last year, and it is my most developed language by far.

Before diving into the article itself, allow me to give a quick outline of how the article
will be structured. I’ll begin with an introduction to perhaps the most unique piece of
Ahalean TAM and its intersection with nouns, in the form of direct-inverse alignment. I’ll
show example sentences with varying constituents, first intransitive, then transitive. I’ll also
briefly discuss inversion of transitive sentences. Once that’s out of the way, we’ll take a look
at the finer details of verbs themselves. I’ll show a special flavor of imperfective which only
pops up occasionally, and then we’ll look at several of the future tense constructions, and
the various situations in which they are used.

Direct­inverse alignment
At the core of a direct-inverse system is an animacy hierarchy (also sometimes referred to
as a person hierarchy). This hierarchy determines whether a verb will take direct or inverse
marking.

In Ahale, this hierarchy is 2nd > 1st > 3rd (PROXIMATE) > 3rd (OBVIATE)

1
All resemblance to actual lexemes from either of these languages is (mostly) coincidental! They serve as
great jumping off points, and are great to fall back on, but I’m no alt-hist mastermind. I just think they’re neat!

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 Ahale

Intransitive verbs
One of the most important things about hierarchical alignment is that the core argument of
an intransitive verb does not participate in direct-inverse alternation. All intransitive verbs
are considered direct, and left unmarked.

(1) a’u xaisi.

a’u xaisi
1.SG sleep
“I am sleeping.”
(2) akatewi hasi.
akatewi hasi
soldier continue
“The soldier is training (and should not be interrupted).”
(3) wa’u teuteukeu.
wa’u teuteukeu
cheese rot
“The cheese is molding.”

I’ve kept all of the verbs very simple for this set of examples. They are all nonpast imper-
fective, which in most cases is interpreted as specifically progressive aspect.

Transitive verbs
In a transitive sentence, the animacy of the two verbal arguments is compared against the
animacy hierarchy. In the case that the animacy of the agent falls below the animacy of the
patient on the hierarchy, the inverse form of the verb is required. Ahale forms the inverse
with the suffix -si.

Transitive verbs additionally trigger nominal inflection. Nouns carry ergative-absolutive

case marking, which is not seen with intransitive verbs; the absolutive case is unmarked.
We’ll start by looking at a set of sentences in which the agent and patient are of differing
person.

(4) a’au keke wa’u.

a’~ au keke wa’u
ERG~ 1.SG eat cheese
“I am eating cheese.”

Here, the agent a’au outranks wa’u (1>3), so the direct form is used. Also, a’u undergoes
a reduplicative process which marks the ergative case. This redundancy comes in handy for
various constructions I will discuss later on.

(5) a’au ’ikesi i’a.

a’~ au ’ike -si i’a.
ERG~ 1.SG understand -INV 2.SG
“I understand you.”

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 Because of the ergative marking, it is clear that a’au is the agent. This means that correct
animacy for this sentence is 1>2. However, following the animacy hierarchy, 2nd person
outranks 1st person. This means ’ike needs to be in the inverse form, ’ikesi, as reflected in
the glossed example.

Disagreement between the case marking and the inflection of the verb is ungrammatical,
and can cause even greater misunderstanding in more complex constructions. An example
of this can be seen below, where I’ve presented two ungrammatical versions of (5):

(6) *a’au ’ike i’a.

a’~ au ’ike i’a
ERG~ 1.SG understand 2.SG
Intended: “I understand you.”

(7) *a’u ’ikesi i’ia.

a’u ’ike -si i’~ ia
1.SG understand -INV ERG~ 2.SG
Intended: “I understand you.”

In (6), the case marking suggests 1 > 2 animacy, but the lack of inverse morphology on
’ike when paired with 1st and 2nd person predicates suggests the opposite relationship.

(7) is essentially the same mistake, but in the opposite direction. The inverse morphology
is present, while the noun cases have been assigned incorrectly.

3>3 animacy

(8) hahawi keke fumau.

ha~ hawi keke fumau
ERG~ rabbit eat grass
“The rabbit is eating the grass.”

In the case of a verb with two 3rd person predicates, the direct-inverse system alone is
insufficient in disambiguating agency. Because of the previously redundant case marking,
however, no clarity is lost.2 In this sort of situation, the inclusion of inverse morphology is
mostly optional. It tends to be applied based on saliency, and is sometimes influenced by
the expected relationship between the two objects.

(9) wa mea’u wu ipe?

wa me- a’u wu ipe
AFF PL- 1 on.top place
“Are we there yet?”
2
The proximate/obviate distinction is on its way to being fully supplanted by the case marking, however
older generations of Ahale speakers oftentimes mark obviation alongside the absolutive. Older speakers tend
to prefer hahawi keke lu fumau for this, but younger speakers tend to interpret this lu as a de-emphatic
particle, in turn placing contrastive focus on the agent.

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 Ahale

You’ve probably noticed that for an article about verbs, I haven’t covered much about
them yet. However, this allows me to be a bit more dismissive of the basics as we move on
to verbs themselves.

Morphophonology
Aside from the inverse marker -si, verbs only inflect for a very small set of TAM affixes.
Ahale distinguishes between nonpast and past tense, as well as between imperfective and
perfective aspects.

The affixes themselves are given in the following table:

Nonpast Past
Imperfective ∅- i-
Perfective V- mu-

Until this point we’ve only looked at nonpast imperfective verbs. Most forms given by the
table are simple concatenative prefixes, although looking at the table you will notice that
the nonpast perfective is noted as V-. This represents an echo vowel, whose realization is
determined by the nucleus of the initial syllable of the stem it attaches to.

(10) keke → ekeke

alu → a’alu
’ike → i’ike
imane → i’imane

You may have noticed that for the latter two examples, this looks identical to what would
be expected for the past imperfective i-. You might be thinking, “Syncretism? In a paradigm
this small?” Not quite. |V-| behaves differently from the rest of these morphemes, in that it
does not move stress. Ahale places stress on the first syllable of a word, unless that would
result in a stressed schwa. In that case, the word receives stress on its second syllable,
regardless of the vowel. This means that under ordinary circumstances, adding a prefix will
shift stress, but this will not occur with |V-|.

This results in minimal pairs between these two forms in i-stem verbs, which differ solely
by the placement of stress.3

Additionally, the prefix mu- is reduced to m- when attached to vowel-initial stems:

(11) keke → mukeke

’ike → mu’ike
aila → maila

Aspect
Perfective
At a basic level, perfective aspect describes a completed action, or an action with a speci-
fied duration.
3
For ease of understanding, the past imperfective of i-stem verbs will be written using ⟨í⟩.

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(12) a’u axaisi.
a’u a~ xaisi
1.SG NPST.PFV~ sleep
“I fell asleep.”
(13) a’au alau weha.
a’~ au a~ lau weha
ERG~ 1.SG NPST.PFV~ neaten curtains
“I neatened the curtains.”

Nonpast perfective aspect is used commonly as a sort of recent past, where the event in
question is roughly adjacent to the speech act. The most important caveat of this is that the
nonpast only acts this way if other relevant events do not intervene significantly.

In order to specify duration, the appropriate unit of time is placed directly before the verb.
A discussion of numbers and counting is out of the scope of this article; all of the following
examples will have a duration of one of their respective units. These units can be either
formal units (days, hours, minutes, etc.), or more abstract units of time (eg. seasons or in
reference to culturally significant events).

(14) a’au kati alau weha.

a’~ au kati a~ lau weha
ERG~ 1.SG minute NPST.PFV~ neaten curtains
“I fussed with the curtains for a minute.”

This duration may either be the length of time for which an event occurred, or in the case
of some verbs, the length of time subsequent to an event’s beginning. The latter (formally
described as the prospective aspect) applies consistently to stative verbs, as well as to a small
set of dynamic verbs.

(15) a’u ne’e u’uata

a’u ne’e u’~ uata
1.SG hour NPST.PFV~ be.full
“I was full after an hour of eating.”
(16) Context: Why did you leave the celebration?
a’u ne’e mulaika
a’u ne’e mu- laika
1.SG hour PST.PFV- be.lonely
“I was lonely after an hour.”

(16) uses the proper past tense, rather than the pseudo-construction that can be made with
nonpast tense. This is primarily because the celebration itself is considered to have inter-
vened between the loneliness and this conversation. Additionally, unless the conversation
was had while leaving the celebration, the celebration is less topical in a temporal sense.

Previously, I mentioned that prospective readings are not exclusive to stative verbs. The
verb xaisi for example, can sometimes be interpreted prospectively:

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 Ahale

(17) a’u ne’e axaisi.

a’u ne’e a~ xaisi
1.SG hour NPST.PFV~ sleep
“I slept for an hour.”
Or: “I fell asleep in an hour.”

In the case of xaisi and other verbs which behave similarly, the intended reading of the
perfective forms must be discerned from context. Note that these are usually read perfec-
tively, while the prospective reading is much more common in things like (12) with no
specified duration.

Imperfective
Generally, the imperfective is used as a simple progressive aspect, as shown all the way
back in (1). A sort of duration can be applied to imperfective verbs in the same manner
as perfective verbs, which simply describes how long the event has been occuring since
its observation. Often this implies some sort of direct sensory observation, but information
established through word-of-mouth can fulfill the same function in more abstract situations,
or those in which direct experience with the situation would be unreasonable or strange.

(18) malaku ne’e xaisi.

malaku ne’e H- xaisi
cat hour NPST.IPFV- sleep
“The cat has been sleeping for an hour.”

(19) akatewi ausi’a ihasi.

akatewi ausi’a i- hasi
soldier summer PST.IPFV- continue
“The soldier had been training all summer (and may still be training).”

(20) eukeu teeki í’ilekatu.

eukeu teeki í’- ilekatu
bread yesterday PST.IPFV- be_stale
“The bread has been stale since yesterday.”

Habitual imperfectives

There is a second (and much less common) use of the imperfective, where it sometimes
replaces a perfective aspect. In discourse, the ambiguity introduced by this is fairly minimal,
though it may pose problems for isolated translations.

(21) masa ti.

masa H- ti
sun NPST.IPFV- rise
“The sun is rising.”
Or: “The sun rose.” (just now, I watched it)

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 This alternation happens with events that are known to be habitual, for which drawing a
distinction between each discrete instance is less important. This is not a frequently utilized
structure, but is common when referring to things that happen out of human control.

Phenomena which follow this principle include:

• The passage of seasons

• Cycles of the sun and moon
• Other cyclic natural processes
• Time, in the context of inevitability and continual change

These imperfectives also tend to imply a more direct experience of the event; the perfective
is still grammatical in these situations, and can be used to draw attention to a particular
instance of a habitual event.

(22) masa kai iti.

masa kai i~ ti
sun today NPST.PFV~ rise
“The sun rose today.” (this day in particular)

And of course, this can be rendered explicitly past tense if the situation warrants it:

(23) masa te’eki muti.

masa te’eki mu- ti
sun yesterday PST.PFV- rise
“The sun rose yesterday.” (this day in particular)

Future Tense Constructions

Ahale does not feature a morphological future, instead relying on a number of periphrastic
constructions.

Dynamic verbs
In situations where the context is clear, the nonpast tense can be used with no additional
periphrasis to form the future:

(24) Context: How are you going to thank your cousin for the gift?
a’au akamai tiname.
a’~ au a~ kamai tiname
ERG~ 1.SG NPST.PFV~ send letter
“I will send a letter.”

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 Ahale

Explicit dynamic future

The explicit future of dynamic verbs is derived from the phrase iwa, alete wa, which can
be idiomatically translated as ‘It was, and so it shall be’. This was generalized to allow for
its use with other verbs.

(25) masa íti alete ti.

masa í- ti alete H rise
sun PST.IPFV- rise thus NPST.IPFV rise
“The sun will rise.”

This is used with habitual imperfectives most frequently, but ordinary dynamic verbs can
be used with this construction in the same way. Because this is primarily used with habitual
perfectives, use with typical imperfectives can at times sound strange, though not necessarily
incorrect. Usually, this construction is used when something had happened in the past, and
is typical or common behavior (or, in the case of more abstract events, simply something
which is common occurrence).

First, let’s look at a few felicitous4 examples:

(26) malaku ixaisi alete xaisi

malaku i- xaisi alete H xaisi
cat PST.IPFV- sleep thus NPST.IPFV sleep
“The cat will be sleeping.”

(27) akatewi ausi’a ihasi alete hasi.

akatwei ausi’a i- hasi alete H hasi
soldier summer PST.IPFV- continue thus NPST.IPFV continue
“The soldier will be training all summer.”

One could analyze this future construction as conveying an implicit “again”, explaining
why it is usually used with commonly occurring events. This analysis is more apt in describ-
ing (27), where the continuation of the event is not to be observed, but rather expected.

Now to look at a few infelicitous examples, followed by their felicitous counters. Typically
the corrected form will be use the unmarked future, but a bit of additional periphrasis to
properly convey tense may be necessary.

(28) #a’au imu alete mu akatewi.

a’~ au i- mu alete H mu akatewi
ERG~ 1.SG PST.IPFV- become thus NPST.IPFV become soldier
“I will be a soldier.”
4
While I present these examples as felicitous, these are still contextually dependent. I’ve attempted to
choose examples which are relatively stable, covering very simple events. Even so, the same concepts could
be translated differently if it was determined that they would not be known or common occurrences in a
specific situation.

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 The mistake in this example is probably the simplest to recognize. Unless this person had
been a soldier in the past, left the job, and returned, framing this change as reoccurring is not
sensible. The only scenario in which the iwa alete wa construction could be reliably used
to describe a change of profession is with seasonal employment (or a similar arrangement).

(29) a’au imu alete mu wainu.

a’~ au i- mu alete H mu wainu
ERG~ 1.SG PST.IPFV- become thus NPST.IPFV become farmer
“I will be a farmer.”

With this in mind, to convey the intended meaning of (28) under the context established,
we will simply use the unmarked future.

(30) a’au mu akatewi.

a’~ au H mu akatewi
ERG~ 1.SG NPST.IPFV become soldier
“I will be a soldier.”

A present tense reading of this is unlikely on account of the verb mu. The process of
becoming something else requires a future reading.

Let’s take another look at (24), but this time assume that we do not have the previously
established context provided by the question. Using the perfective version of the iwa alete
wa construction (wherein the first verb remains imperfective, and the second verb inflects
perfectively), we would expect the following:

(31) #a’au ikamai alete akamai tiname.

a’~ au i- kamai alete a- kamai tiname
ERG~ 1.SG PST.IPFV- send thus NPST.PFV- send letter
“I will send a letter.”

But without the previous context, we cannot consider this an expected or habitual event,
meaning the explicit future is unsuitable here. What can we do then? We could use the
unmarked future, but that could be easily misinterpreted as recent past. One relatively
straightforward solution is to explicitly introduce a future deadline with the particle na.

(32) a’au na kai akamai tiname.

a’~ au na kai a- kamai tiname
ERG~ 1.SG DEADLINE today NPST.PFV- send letter
“I will send a letter sometime today.”

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 Ahale

Contrasting implicit vs explicit future

So far we’ve been judging felicity and correcting examples felicitous in only one of the two
forms of future tense. In this section, we will look at paired examples of each construction,
where each pair describes a similar event in relation to particular semantic material.

(33) Semantic material: sensation, intuition

a. nula na masa ’e ti iteuteukeu alete teuteukeu.5

nula na masa ’e ti i- teuteukeu alete H
body DEADLINE sun REL rise NPST.PFV- rot thus NPST.IPFV
teuteukeu
rot
“My body will be deteriorating soon (since I’m so old already).”
Or: “My body will be deteriorating by sunrise.” (literal)
a. a’au umu ki pa ulunata.
a’~ au u~ mu ki pa u~ lunata
ERG~ 1.SG NPST.PFV~ embody sickness now NPST.PFV~ die
“I’ve fallen ill and will be dead soon.”

(34) Semantic material: plants, growth

a. tu’ase iwueli alete wueli.

tu’ase i- wueli alete H wueli
grain PST.IPFV- grow thus NPST.IPFV grow
“The grain is growing again.” (whereas previously, it was neglected)
b. tu’ase na pa uwueli.
tu’ase na pa u~ wueli
grain DEADLINE now NPST.PFV~ grow
“It’s time for the grain to grow (it is necessary).”
Or: “The grain must be grown by now (at the latest).”

Stative verbs
Future tense of stative verbs is formed by using siha ‘to happen’ as an auxiliary verb placed
before the nonpast form of the main verb. Conveniently, stative verbs consistently work this
way, meaning there are many fewer factors to think about in conveying a particular message.

(35) a’au siha nale.

a’~ au siha H nale
ERG~ 1.SG happen NPST.IPFV be.sad
“I will be sad.”
5
The explicit future is not strictly necessary here, on account of the duration provided. However, I have
used it here because it fits the context of the sentence. If context or additional periphrasis makes both con-
structions valid, explicit future can be used for stylistic purposes, or to highlight the expectation.

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(36) a’au siha laika.
a’ au siha H laika
ERG 1.SG happen NPST.IPFV be.lonely
“I will be lonely.”

Coda
In this article, I introduced a large portion of the foundational grammar of Ahale. I got
to describe how such a small system can still be quite expressive, and show nuance even
with the limited morphology available. I briefly introduced direct-inverse systems to give a
better understanding of the relationship verbs have to other concepts, even though it didn’t
make much of an appearance in the majority of the article. And then finally we looked
at future tense in great detail, showing many different ways to work around the lack of a
morphological future or even a dedicated present tense.

There’s a lot of that went into the original version of this article that didn’t make it into
the final cut. I hope to be able to share those things with all of you in one form or another,
but this will have to do for now. I would have loved to be able to give more details on other
moods, which didn’t come up at all except for one interrogative sentence used to transition
between sections. In the original form of this article, I had wanted to discuss common
derivational morphology as well, but for the sake of clarity and also length it had to be
removed. And finally, I would have loved to be able to include more examples, and possibly
showcase the direct-inverse system more. This didn’t end up happening, as I wanted to
make sure that all of the examples provided had a specific and clear purpose, which I felt
the inversion may distract from.

I’m so glad that I was able to share my language with all of you! If you have any questions,
or want more details, you can find me on Discord at Pancake#7400. I’ll gladly answer as
many questions as I can!

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 Noun Incorporation
19 in Mā Sip

by Lysimachiakis

Argument Raising & Valency

Dadēsi fe vōha tap mã ni!

AUG.RDP~enjoyment ATTR language make NMLZ RLS
‘I love conlanging!’

Mā Sip is a language that I started to work on during the 8th Speedlang Challenge in
March 2021. I wanted to step outside my comfort zone in conlanging, and so I set out to
make a naturalistic language that is primarily isolating and analytic. I have so often made
languages that are agglutinating or fusional, and I wanted a change of pace to help me better
appreciate the intricacies of analytic systems.

This article will focus on patterns of noun incorporation in Mā Sip, exploring their forms
and their functions, with special emphasis on their role in the larger verbal construct, and
their implications on wider discourse topics.

What is Noun Incorporation?

Noun Incorporation (NI) refers to a process that occurs in many languages across the world
in which a noun is made to be part of the verbal unit (whatever that may look like in a
given language), for lexical distinction or, more often, for syntactic and pragmatic purposes.
This process is intimately linked to the concept of argument structure and most languages
that make use of NI do so in order to highlight the arguments that are most salient, most
important to the topic at hand.

Marianne Mithun describes NI using an implication hierarchy. In her research, she claims
that there are four distinct types of NI, and if a language has a higher type, then it will have
all of the lower types as well (Mithun 1984).

Type 1 refers to simple lexical compounding. This would be any instance where a noun is
incorporated into a verb in order to describe a specific action. As Mithun says, “[c]ompounding

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 Mā Sip

is done for a reason. Some entity, quality, or activity is recognized sufficiently often to be
considered name-worthy in its own right” (p848). Type 1 NI takes the object of a transitive
clause and incorporates it into the verb, creating a new intransitive construction. English
doesn’t incorporate readily, but one could imagine an analogous example such as ‘food-
shopping’, in which the action – shopping for food – is deemed significant enough to merit
its own lexical item.

Type 2 refers to a type of lexical compounding that also impacts the role marking of other
arguments of the clause. Mithun describes Type 2 as very similar to Type 1 on the surface,
in that both incorporate the direct object into the verb. However, instead of removing an
argument and decreasing the valency of the verb phrase, Type 2 then raises some oblique
argument to the direct object role after the original object is incorporated: “When a transitive
V incorporates its direct object, then an instrument, location, or possessor may assume the
vacated direct object role. When an intransitive V incorporates its subject, another argument
may be advanced to subject status” (Mithun 1984, p856). Mithun argues that this type of
NI is significant because its role, unlike Type 1, is more focused on discourse: “The result is
a lexical device for manipulating case relations within clauses” (p859).

Type 3 refers to NI used for discourse manipulation above all else. With Type 3 NI, back-
ground information and other things known between the speaker and the listener can be
incorporated into the verb as a means of defocusing that information and, by contrast, high-
lighting the non-incorporated elements. Interestingly, Mithun notes that the vast majority
of languages that make use of Type 3 NI are polysynthetic in their composition.

Lastly, Type 4 refers to the incorporation of classificatory nouns. “A relatively general

[noun] stem is incorporated to narrow the scope of the [verb], as in Type 3; but the com-
pound stem can be accompanied by a more specific external [noun phrase] which identifies
the argument implied by the [incorporated element]. Once the argument has been identi-
fied, the general, incorporable [noun] stem is sufficient to qualify [the verbs] involving this
argument in subsequent discourse” (p863).

Mithun summarizes the four types succinctly: “While all types result in a backgrounding
of the [incorporated noun], Type 1 serves to reduce its salience within the [verb], Type 2
within the clause, and Type 3 within a particular portion of the discourse” (p862). Type 4
is an extension of Type 3, in that its role is in discourse, and it is used for backgrounding
information throughout the entire discourse by easily incorporating a simple classificatory
element.

Incorporation in Mā Sip follows Mithun’s hierarchy with regards to Type 1 and Type 2 NI,
but it lacks Type 3, and uses what could be considered a variant of Type 4 classificatory
incorporation that functions more similarly to Type 2’s valency changing. In Mā Sip’s no-
tational system, the types of NI are broken up into different classes and are differentiated
along slightly different lines than in Mithun’s work, though the end result is quite similar.
The following sections will go into depth on each class of NI in Mā Sip, providing examples
and context along the way to help demonstrate and showcase this highly productive feature
of the language. Mā Sip is still a work in progress, and some of these features may be liable
to change as I continue to develop the language.

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Sentence Structure in Mā Sip
Mā Sip, being an analytic language, maintains a relatively rigid word order in its sentences.
Most sentences will have a subject (S), though this can be dropped in certain contexts.
All sentences must have both a verbal identifier (VID), a pre-verbal particle that typically
marks the mood of the clause (most often, realis ni vs. irrealis ba), and a verb (V). The
positioning of objects depends upon the animacy of the object; high animacy patients (P)
appear between the subject and the VID, while low animacy objects (O) appear after the
verb, with a prepositional particle a.

• Intransitive: S VID V
• Transitive, High Animacy: S P VID V
• Transitive, Low Animacy: S VID V a O
• Ditransitive: S P VID V a O

The only thing then that can occur after a VID is the verb. Multiple verbs can stack up
in the verb phrase using an infixed linking morpheme /h/. Because word class is typically
weak in Mā Sip, some nouns can function as verbs and some verbs can function as nouns
with no additional morphological marking. How, then, can one tell that what is happening
in the language is indeed noun incorporation? The answer lies with /h/: when two verbs
are present in the verb phrase, the rightmost (typically function-focused) verb takes the
linking infix and the main lexical verb does not; when a noun is incorporated, however, the
following verb takes no overt marking, and instead seems to function as a type of compound
with incorporated noun. We know a noun has been incorporated if it occurs between the
VID and the V without a linking /h/.

Class I: Object Incorporation

The most common type of incorporation in Mā Sip is simple object incorporation, hereby
referred to as Class I (CI) incorporation. This involves the direct object of a transitive clause
being incorporated into the verb, resulting in the creation of an intransitive verbal unit.

(1) Sai ni nam hunã ba nul.

sai ni nam hunã ba nul
1.SG RLS food buy REL yesterday
“I went food shopping yesterday.”
lit. “I food-bought yesterday.”

This type of incorporation is most commonly used to define a recurring, commonplace

action. When used in a main clause, this is almost always its purpose: to defocus the object
because the verb-object pairing represents a distinct unified meaning. In this sense, CI
incorporation can be seen as a type of antipassive construction, due to its defocusing nature.

Such constructions, however, are also preferred in relative clauses due to constraints on
argument structure within such clauses. Generally speaking, the only role that may be
relativized in a clause is the subject. As a result, valency-changing operations are rampant
in relative clauses. Intransitive constructions are strongly preferred whenever possible. This
pressure is thought to be because of the syntax of Mā Sip utterances, which places subjects
before a class of verb markers called verbal identifiers (VID); however, in main clauses,
animate direct objects are also found in this position. This can lead to ambiguity, and
avoiding this ambiguity is thought to be the rationale for avoiding complex relative clauses.

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 Mā Sip

(2) a. Mhina ikpi ni nafti.

Mhina ikpi ni nafti
Mhina dog RLS wash
“Mhina washed the dog.”
b. Mhina ba ikpi nafti pho ni wah.
Mhina ba ikpi nafti pho ni wah
Mhina REL dog wash PFV RLS fall.asleep
“Mhina, who washed the dog, fell asleep.”

The object ikpi ‘dog’, as seen in (2a), occurs in the animate object position, before the VID
but after the subject. When the noun is incorporated, it moves to occur between the VID and
the verb. In example (2b), where the incorporated phrase is relativized, its position then
becomes pre-VID, and can be ambiguous.1

The restrictions on relative clauses exist because of ambiguity of referents if a normal

object structure were to be used.

(3) Mhina ni nafti a kā.

Mhina ni nafti a kā
Mhina RLS wash ACC car
“Mhina washes the car.”

(4) a. *Mhina ba nafti a kā ni dapai.

Mhina ba nafti a kā ni dapai
Mhina REL wash ACC car RLS cut
Intended: “(i). Mhina, who washes the car, cuts (something).”
Or: “(ii). Mhina, who washes, cuts the car.”
b. Mhina ba kā nafti ni dapai.
Mhina ba kā nafti ni dapai
Mhina REL car wash RLS cut
“Mhina, who washes the car, cuts (something).”

If the base sentence in (3) were to be made into a relative clause, one might think, looking
at main clause structures in Mā Sip, that (4a) would be an appropriate option. However, this
is dispreferred and would sound downright strange to most speakers. Because the relative
clause has an object a kā ‘the car’ which appears post-verbally, the position of object kā now
overlaps with the animate object position of the main clause. This results in some ambiguity,
with translations (i) and (ii) both being possible interpretations. Of course, in practice,
this is likely to be clearer, as kā is obviously an inanimate object and would not appear
pre-verbally. However, the awkwardness of the construction is what ultimately guides the
language to prefer incorporation instead, as in (4b).

The CI incorporation construction is also frequently used as the basis for forming agent
nouns from verb phrases. This is accomplished by relativizing the incorporated phrase and
set it modifying an ambiguous ‘one’-type noun.
1
For this reason, auxiliary/linking verbs are often preferred in relative clauses as they work to clearly
deliminate the end of the relative clause.

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(5) ī ba kā nafti
ī ba kā nafti
one REL car wash
“carwasher; one who washes cars”

(6) ī ba pase duk

ī ba pase duk
one REL cake cook
“cakebaker; pastry chef”

CI incorporation is also preferred when nominalizing verb phrases using the postpositional
nominalizing particle mã. In these constructions, the verb siwat is often dropped.

(7) Dāsi fe bihãs alẽ mã Nōmi la ni (siwat).

dāsi fe bihãs alẽ mã Nōmi la ni siwat
enjoyment ATTR phone write NMLZ Nōmi LOC RLS EXIST
“Nōmi likes texting.”
lit. “At Nōmi there exists enjoyment of phone-writing.”

CI incorporation can be used to form a more true antipassive: a generic object pronoun
poi is incorporated, the original object is lost, and the subject is focused by contrast. An
indefinite 3rd person inanimate pronoun is incorporated to satisfy grammatical restrictions
on isolated transitive verbs.

(8) Sai ni poi olga.

sai ni poi olga
1.SG RLS 3.INAN read
“I am reading.”

Instrument incorporation is a common feature of CI incorporation as well. In this con-

struction, the instrument is incorporated into the verb phrase to highlight the manner. This
is quite common with some less-defined verbs, such as dapai ‘to cut.’

(9) a. Duk dok ni bak dapai a kom.

duk dok ni bak dapai a kom
baker RLS knife cut ACC bread
“The baker cut the bread.”
b. Duk dok ni deknap dapai a kom.
duk dok ni deknap dapai a kom
baker RLS sharp.knife cut ACC bread
“The baker sliced the bread.”

In these cases, as it is an oblique argument that is being incorporated, the original direct
object is maintained. Some of these constructions, however, have become so commonplace

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 Mā Sip

that the verbs have reduced forms that have been reanalyzed as a verbal derivational suffix
that attach to these instruments to indicate their use. One such case exists with dapai ‘to cut’
above, resulting in -(p)ai ‘to cut with X.’ This results in now lexicalized forms, like deknapai
‘to slice with a sharp knife’ in (10a) below.

(10) a. Duk dok ni deknapai a kom.

duk dok ni dekna -pai a kom
baker RLS sharp.knife -cut.with ACC bread
“The baker sliced the bread.”
b. Helẽ ni elapai a pul.
helẽ ni elap -pai a pul
woman RLS small.blade -cut.with ACC fruit
“The woman peeled the fruit.”

Class II: Subject Incorporation

Though rarer than CI incorporation, Class II (CII) incorporation is the incorporation of
subjects into intransitive verbs as a means of defocusing and backgrounding information.
This can be seen particularly in subordinate clause constructions.

(11) Oi ba amī laklān, fantu la xamak ni siwat.

oi ba amī lak -lān fantu la xamak ni siwat
time REL sky dark -RDP 3.SG.FAM LOC fear RLS EXIST
“When it gets dark outside, he gets scared.”
lit. “The time when it becomes sky-dark, at him there is fear.”

(12) Ta2 ba nela govi, ta sai ni hān lihah a ludõ mã la.

ta ba nela govi ta sai ni hān lihah a ludõ mã la
if REL rain fall then 1.SG RLS stand FUT ACC be.sad NMLZ LOC
“If it rains, then I will start to feel sad.”
lit. “If it rain-falls, I will stand at being sad.”

These expressions are far more common with inanimate referents, and this process is re-
sisted the higher the animacy of the referent, as below in (13), which results in a somewhat
unusual structure.

(13) Taso ba makmi, ta mihip, ta Luha ni mai tixāt shiwa lihah.

Taso ba makmi ta mihi -ãp Luha ni mai tixāt shiwa lihah
Taso REL be.killed if DEM -CL.COL Luha RLS CL.AHM try.to.forget HYP
“If Taso is killed, Luha will try to forget him.”
lit. “Taso is killed, if that, then Luha will try to forget him.”
2
While usage of oi and ta are similar, they differ in one major regard: oi implies that such an event has
happened before, and therefore the response is a known and expected thing; ta, on the other hand, implies
that such an event has not happened before, at least not with the consequences explained in the main clause

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 In (13), because the subject that would typically be incorporated is a name, the incorpo-
ration is resisted. What results is that the bare clause is introduced and then qualified with
ta mihip ‘if that.’ These kinds of roundabout structures, while wordier, allow for the named
entity to still maintain salience in the clause.

However, such expressions are possible as a way of showcasing habitual actions with indef-
inite referents. This construction is always accompanied by some form of a location word,
such as isit ‘here’ or uk ‘there’, the choice of which is typically determined by how salient
the generality is (with isit preferred for generalities with a present-tense interpretation, and
uk with a non-present interpretation).

(14) Isit ba to gaza de ni.

isit ba to gaza de ni
here REL man work DETR RLS
“Men work.”
lit. “(There is) here that man-works.”

(15) Uk ba hōhohak unulki fu ni.

uk ba hōhohak unulki fu ni
there REL dinosaur attack REFL RLS
“Dinosaurs fought each other.”

In (14) and (15) above, the verb is dropped and left implicit with the VID ni remaining.
It is unclear exactly what the intended verb is in this construction; most agree that it is the
existential siwat ‘there is,’ but it is far from a settled matter.

Class III: Classifier Incorporation

The last type of noun incorporation in Mā Sip is Class III (CIII) incorporation, in which
classifiers are incorporated. Mā Sip makes use of nine different classifiers, which feature
extensively in noun phrase constructions. They are consistently paired with numerals, de-
terminers, and adjectives. The classifiers are as below:

Number Form Category Abbreviation

1 mai human adults AHM
2 bau human children CHM
3 hai animals NML
4 kis food FOOD
5 mani drink DR
6 isis flexible object FLEX
7 okan rigid object RGD
8 ala stars, celestial STR
9 ãp collections, groups COL

Table 1: Noun Classifiers in Mā Sip

Typically, these classifiers are used in noun phrases in order to classify the head noun and
link it with demonstratives and numerals.

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 Mā Sip

(16) to mai aga (17) ikpi kinhai

to mai aga ikpi kin -hai
man CL.AHM three dog none -CL.NML
“three men” “none of the dogs; no dogs”

These classifiers can themselves be incorporated into the same position as bare nouns.
When they are incorporated as such, the result is an applicative-like construction. The
classifier that best matches the most prototypical object of a given verb is incorporated and
then an oblique element is raised to object position. Typically, the oblique that is raised is
of similar or higher animacy than the object that is replaced by the classifier.

(18) Tana te ofusku ni kis obin shiwa.

tana te ofa- usku ni kis obin shiwa
friend FAM 3.SG.FAM.POSS- girlfriend RLS CL.FOOD cook
“My friend cooked for their girlfriend.”
lit. “Friend food-cooked their girlfriend.”

(19) Ẽsai hes lumaba ni ala ẽsai.

ẽsai hes lumaba ni ala ẽsai
decider poor.person RLS CL.STR decide
“The judge made a decision regarding the unfortunate person.”
lit. “The decider thing-decided the poor person.”

This construction is rather ambiguous and its interpretation is often left to context. In
(18), the verb obin shiwa ‘cook’ would prototypically take an edible entity as its object;
thus, kis ‘CL.FOOD’ is the classifier of choice for incorporation. This then elevates an oblique
animate entity, ofusku ‘their girlfriend’, to object position. With CIII classifier incorporation,
the raised element is almost always assumed to have been a a recipient, a benefactor, a
malefactor, or an accompanier. The verb structure and semantics is typically enough to
disambiguate what the intended applicative reading is, but two additional elements can
co-occur with this construction to further clarify. Take the example in (19) above:

(20) a. Ẽsai hes lumaba ni ala suwẽsai.

ẽsai hes lumaba ni ala sū- ẽsai
decider poor.person RLS CL.STR good- decide
“The judge ruled in the unfortunate person’s favor.”
lit. “The decider thing-decided good the poor person.”
Compare with: (21a)
b. Ẽsai hes lumaba ni ala ivẽsai.
ẽsai hes lumaba ni ala ivah- ẽsai
decider poor.person RLS CL.STR bad- decide
“The judge ruled against the unfortunate person.”
lit. “The decider thing-decided bad the poor person.”
Compare with: (21b)

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(21) a. Ẽsai hes ni ẽsai a sū mã a lumaba bomi.
ẽsai hes ni ẽsai a sū mā a lumaba bomi
decider RLS decide ACC good NMLZ ACC poor.person support
“The judge ruled in the unfortunate person’s favor.”
lit. “The decider decided goodness in support of the unfortunate person.”
b. Ẽsai hes ni ẽsai a ivah mã a lumaba bã.
ẽsai hes ni ẽsai a ivah mā a lumaba bã
decider RLS decide ACC bad NMLZ ACC poor.person disapprove
“The judge ruled against the unfortunate person.”
lit. “The decider decided badness in disapproval of the unfortunate person.”

In (20a), the true adjective sū is affixed onto the verb, where it reduces to suw- due to the
V onset of the verb. The affix here serves to indicate the result of the verb is positive.3 Thus,
a reading of ‘decide in one’s favor’ is the best interpretation of this construction. In contrast,
(20b) uses ivah ‘bad’ to narrow the meaning, surfacing as iv- before a V-initial verb. Here,
the verb could be defined now as ‘to decide against someone.’

Conclusion
Noun incorporation is a productive feature of Mā Sip’s verb structure. Incorporation is used
to manage discourse prominence, to create new lexical items, and to satisfy grammatical
restrictions on relative clause structures. It is an important tool that I am able to use to
keep the language mostly isolating and analytic while allowing for these to function in a
variety of contexts and situations. It’s remarkably flexible in its applications. As I develop
the language, I find more and more ways of using NI, and I am looking forward to exploring
the topic more as I continue with my work.

I’m excited to continue work on Mā Sip! If you have any questions or comments, please
feel free to reach out to me at /u/Lysimachiakis!

Peace, Love, & Conlanging!

- Lys

3
Though this again could be considered ambiguous; if, for instance, public perception was certain of the
man’s guilt, then suwẽsai would imply that the result that was desired (conviction) was what was decided. In
these cases, the word choice elsewhere in the sentence would clarify; in this case, usage of lumaba is enough
to do so, as the word implies a great deal of sympathy for the referent.

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 20 Atłaq Mode Prefixes

by ­Tonic

The many ways of eating apples

Some of the more unique features of Atłaq can be found among the so called “mode”
prefixes. They do not encode one specific category but instead, depending on the prefix,
signal some combination of modality, realization, polarity, and finiteness. Realization, as I
call it, is a category that to my knowledge is unique to Atłaq. You can think of it as a kind
of non-standard tense, but to really understand it we’ll need to talk a bit about how events
are structured first. In this article I’ll describe the forms of the mode prefixes and how they
are used, and at the end I’ll also briefly discuss their historical origins.

Their Forms

Affirmative Negative
Realized n-
k-
Non-realized ∅-
Irrealis (a)tš- ašk-
Infinitive v(a)- vak(u)-
Table 1: Atłaq mode prefixes

Every single verb in Atłaq will begin with one of the mode prefixes shown in table 1. There
is some variation in these forms depending of the speaker’s age. For one, the allomorph tš-
is the strongly dominating form of the affirmative irrealis, but atš- can still be found in
formal contexts, especially among older speakers. There is also variation in the infinitives,
but that will require some more explanation. A vowel-initial subject prefix will follow all
mode prefixes except the infinitives. To avoid violating the phonotactics the allomorphs va-
and vaku- of the infinitives are therefore used before consonants. This is only true for older
speakers however. Among younger speakers the epenthetic -a- of affirmative infinitives of

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 Atłaq

consonant-initial stems has been reanalysed as the subject prefix a-1 . This then spread to the
other infinitive forms as can be seen in figure 20. Lately, it has become possible to replace
the a- with other subject prefixes leading to “infinitives” like ṿaqeṃaran ‘that (s)he isn’t
confident’. This last example also showcases the leftward spreading of the feature [˘RTR],
which in practice means that labials become uvularized (written with an underdot), velars
and palatals become uvular, and vowels are retracted2 .

Aff. Neg. Aff. Neg.

-tšam vatšam vakutšam -tšam vatšam vakatšam
-in vin vakin -in vajin vakajin

Table 2: Infinitive forms of -tšam ‘eat’ and -in ‘drink’ for older (left) and younger (right)
speakers. Note the epenthetic -j-’s.

Their Functions
Realization
If you’re dancing, at which point is it true that you danced? Well, immediately after you
start of course. It doesn’t matter if it was for one hour or one second, you still danced.
But if you’re eating an apple, at which point is it true that you ate an apple? In this case
it’s not enough to eat only part of it, you need to actually finish the apple to say that you
ate it. Notice the difference: any sub-event of a “dance”-event counts as a “dance”-event
but no sub-event of an “eat an apple”-event counts as an “eat an apple”-event. If some X-
event contains a sub-event entirely located in the past that could also be described as an
X-event, then that event is said to be realized, and the time when the event goes from being
non-realized to realized is called the realization time of the event. So for “dance”-events the
realization time occurs at the beginning of the event because it is realized as soon as it starts,
while for “eat an apple”-events the realization time occurs at the end since it isn’t realized
until the entire apple has been eaten. This is the basis of how the grammatical category of
realization works in Atłaq. We can now start looking at some examples.

(1) a. Naxtsiššëz.
n- av- tsiššëz
RZ- 1SG- dance
“I am dancing/danced.”
b. Axtsiššëz.
∅- av- tsiššëz
NRZ- 1SG- dance
“I will dance.”

(2) a. Naxtšami abël.

n- av- tšam -i abël
RZ- 1SG- eat -3SG.INAN apple
“I ate an apple.”
1
a- is an expletive subject prefix mostly used when an intransitive verb incorporates its subject, see example
(19). It’s also identical to the 3S.INAN subject prefix, see example (18).
2
ṿaqeṃaran is pronounced [ˈʋʶɑqɛmʶɑˌʁɑn]. Without spreading it would be *vakiṃaran [ˈβakimʶɑˌʁɑn].

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 b. Axtšami abël.
∅- av- tšam -i abël
NRZ- 1SG- eat -3SG.INAN apple
“I am eating/will eat an apple.”

A realized “dance”-event can occur either in the past or the present while a realized “eat an
apple”-event can only be in the past. So far so good. But consider the following examples.

(3) a. Naxtšamëmm abël.

n- av- tšam -ṃṃ abël
RZ- 1SG- eat -3PL.INAN apple
“I ate apples.”
Or: “I am eating apples (and I have finished at least one).”
b. Axtšamëmm abël.
∅- av- tšam -ṃṃ abël
NRZ- 1SG- eat -3PL.INAN apple
“I will eat apples.”
Or: “I am eating apples (but I haven’t finished one yet).”

How can we explain this behaviour? Well, assuming the apples are eaten sequentially, we
can think of the entire event as consisting of a number of sub-events of eating individual
apples. Those sub-events counts as “eat apples”-events, but any smaller sub-event — such as
only taking a single bite of an apple — does not. Therefore the realization time occurs after
eating exactly one apple, explaining the translations of the examples in (3)3 . The realization
time can occur not only at the start or at the end, but in the middle of an event as well4 !

So you can see how realization has some similarities to standard tense. Events located
entirely in the past are always realized and those in located entirely in the future are always
non-realized. However, currently ongoing events can be either realized or non-realized
depending on the inherent structure of the event in question5 .

It’s also possible to talk about eating apple(s) without having the realization time be after
exactly one apple is eaten. This is done by noun incorporation.

(4) a. Navabëlëtšam.
n- av- abël- tšam
RZ- 1SG- apple- eat
“I was/am eating apple.”
3
It’s probably best to think of the Atłaq plural as “not explicitly singular” here. Even after eating only a
single apple the verb will be realized, and noun phrases with the determiner aht ‘no, zero’ or mass nouns may
take plural agreement.
4
This is why we can’t just say that realized events are either past events or present atelic ones. For telic
events, characterized by having a final change of state, the realization time must be at that change of state.
As we have just seen however, just because an event is atelic doesn’t mean that its realization time occurs at
the start.
5
If you’re familiar with (neo-)Reichenbachian theories of tense and aspect, we can describe it as follows:
while both standard tense and realization are the relations between speech time and something else, for tense
it’s the relation to reference time, but for realization it’s the relation to realization time (which is a time
included in the event time).

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 Atłaq

b. Avabëlëtšam.
∅- av- abël- tšam
NRZ- 1SG- apple- eat
“I will be eating apple.”

It’s no longer about any specific apple, but about the general activity of apple-eating.
Essentially, -abëlëtšam ‘eat apple’ functions like a single, dance-like verb, cf. example (1).
A specific quantity of apples can then be specified in an adjunct headed by the relational
noun6 ana ‘friend, with’.

(5) Navabëlëtšam anajaa tsivëš.

n- av- abël- tšam ana -aa tsif =š
RZ- 1SG- apple- eat with -3SG.INAN.ADC one.INAN =PN
“I was/am eating an apple.”

Unlike example (2a), example (5) can be used with past tense reference without entailing
that the apple was fully eaten.

There are a few extra cases where the non-realized forms are used that are worth men-
tioning. General truths that aren’t limited to any particular time is one of these.

(6) Haman-š iman.

Haman =š ∅- i- man
red:star =PN NRZ- 3SG.AN- be.red
“Mars is red.”

Direct orders can also be formed with the non-realized.

(7) Isasi-ntsa banaana.

∅- is- as -i =ntsa banaana
NRZ- 2SG- give -3SG.INAN =1SG.BEN banana
“Give me a banana!”

Irrealis
The irrealis forms have various uses, but I will only briefly mention the main ones here.
It can mark a general possibility but not certainty of some event occurring.

(8) Tšaṿurrulëłiits.
tš- av- urrul- łiits
IRR- 1SG- genital- be.cut
“I might be sterile.”
6
A relational noun is essentially a noun that functions as an adposition. Atłaq does not have regular
adpositions.

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 It can also be used to form polite requests, cf. example (7).

(9) Tšisasi-ntsa banaana.

tš- is- as -i =ntsa banaana
IRR- 2SG- give -3SG.INAN =1SG.BEN banana
“Could you give me a banana?”
Context: The speaker is making a request.

Lastly, it’s used in polar questions.

(10) Tšixxusët?
tš- is- xus- t
IRR- 2SG- dog - have
“Do you have any dogs?”

Infinitive
Infinitives (both affirmative and negative) come in three flavours: independent (unmarked),
imperfective dependent (marked with -a after the verb stem), and perfective dependent (-u).
Independent infinitive phrases always denote non-specific and/or hypothetical situations.
They can form arguments on their own or adverbials when introduced by a relational noun.

(11) Naavëni vavann.

n- i- avën -i va- vann
RZ- 3SG.H- want -3SG.INAN INF- sleep
“(S)he wants to sleep.”
(12) Banaa vavann axtšibbin.
ban -aa va- vann ∅- av- tšibb- in
forehead -3SG.INAN.ADC INF- sleep NRZ- 1SG- water - drink
“Right before going to sleep I drink water.”

Dependent infinitives always form adverbials, and can’t be headed by relational nouns.
They are the main way to form conditionals (if-statements), in which case the matrix clause
(the clause containing the infinitive phrase) is in the irrealis. The imperfective dependent
infinitive is used when the event described by the matrix clause is temporally contained
within the event of the infinitive phrase (basically a while-clause), while the perfective is
used for when the event described by the matrix clause comes after the event of the infinitive
phrase.

Realis matrix clause Irrealis matrix clause

Imperfective dependent while if (while)
Perfective dependent after if (after)
Table 3: Interpretation of dependent infinitives

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 Atłaq

(13) Vinuj tšistłarrën.

v- in -u -j tš- is- tłarrën
INF- drink -PFV -3SG.INAN IRR- 2SG- die
“If you drink it, you’ll die.”

(14) Vinuj nitłarrën.

v- in -u -j n- i- tłarrën
INF- drink -PFV -3SG.INAN RZ- 3SG.H- die
“After (s)he drank it, (s)he died.”

(15) Vakiisa tšissivannëq.

va- kiis -a tš- is- si- vann -q
INF- lie.down -IPFV IRR- 2SG- CAUS- sleep -REFL
“If you lie down, you’ll fall asleep.”

(16) Vakiisa nassivannëq.

va- kiis -a n- av- si- vann -q
INF- lie.down -IPFV RZ- 1SG- CAUS- sleep -REFL
“While lying down, I fell asleep.”

Negation
For the negative irrealis, the negation should be thought of as applying before the irrealis
meaning. Therefore, it is signaling possibility about the negation of an event, not negation
of the possibility.

(17) Aškitšaaṿunuṃṃ si Xutł izzur.

ašk- i- tšaaṿun -u -ṃṃ si= Xutł izzur
NEG.IRR- 3SG.AN- gather -PFV -3PL.INAN 3SG.H.DET= NAME plant
“Xutł might not have gathered the plants.”
Not: “Xutł couldn’t have gathered the plants.”

There is no realization distinction in the negative.

(18) Qaṿ ṃahh.

k- a- ṿ ṃahh
NEG- 3SG.INAN- fall fruit
“The fruit didn’t fall/isn’t falling/won’t fall.”

Any negative adverb or other negative constituent that implies that some event did not
take place necessitates the use of a negative verb form. Multiple negatives do not cancel
each other.

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(19) Katšibbëf ̣f ̣ Sahara errutt.
k- a- tšibb- f̣f ̣ Sahara errutt
NEG- EXPL- water - rain NAME never
“It never rains in the Sahara.”
Not: “It’s not the case that it never rains in the Sahara.”
Not: “It’s never the case that it doesn’t rain in the Sahara.”

Their Origins
Atłaq is part of the Emaic language family and descends from Proto-Emaic, or PMA for
short7 . The Emaic family consists of five main branches labelled A to E, with Atłaq belonging
to branch A. All of the mode prefixes (except possibly n-) can be traced back to PMA.

The negative k- and irrealis (a)tš- come from the PMA preverbal particles *ɡuʰ and *sʳadʳi
respectively. These particles may in reality have been auxiliary verbs, on account of their
often modal semantics and some apparent vestiges of verbal morphology. The dropping
of the a in atš- likely initially occured due to analogy with the other prefixes consisting
of a single consonant. The origin of n- is a lot more uncertain, but one possibility is that
it’s related to the Proto-E negative morpheme *luːh which probably also was a preverbal
particle in PMA. In that case they must both come from PMA *li[r/ɣ](u). Initial *l is
reflected as n in Atłaq, so with a bit of reduction you’d get the Atłaq morpheme. How to
connect realization with negation might not be very obvious, but if the original meaning
was something like “stop”, then both developments seem plausible. The infinitive v(a)- has
a completely different source. Instead of a particle/auxiliary verb it comes from *βa-, a
derivational prefix forming mostly abstract nouns.

The negative infinitive vak(u)- is transparently derived from the corresponding affirmative
infinitive + the negative k- (and an epenthetic -u- that is no longer present for the plain
negative). The formation of the negative irrealis ašk- is also pretty transparent, with the
caveat that it most likely comes from a reduced *atšëk-.

7
For more information, take a look at article 27 of Segments issue #1, where I described and discussed the
phonology of PMA from an in-world point of view.

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 21 Akiatu's resultatives

by Akam Chinjir

A common way for my conlang Akiatu to encode results is with what I’ll call a resultative
complement. This is a word or phrase, right after the verb, that sets out the result of the
event being described.

Here’s an example:1

(1) itamu apawasi taiku iruwa

Itamu melon cut two
“Itamu cut the melon in two”

iruwa ‘two’ is the resultative complement. It tells us that as a result of Itamu’s cutting, the
melon was two, which is to say, it was in two pieces.

This article is about resultative constructions like this, both the forms they can take and the
ways they interact with some other bits of Akiatu grammar, especially aspect and valency.
There’s also a short account of the in-world history of Akiatu resultative.

The main real-world inspirations for this area of Akiatu grammar are English and Man-
darin. If you speak either of those two languages, at least some of the following will probably
strike you as familiar. I’ve written about Akiatu’s resultatives before, primarily in a subred-
dit post called Telicity in Akiatu. Lots of things have changed since then, some of them quite
significant.

The resultative construction

Before looking at its parts in detail, I want to give a general sketch of Akiatu’s resultative
construction. I’ll use this example:
1
Transcriptions of Akiatu follow IPA conventions, except that an acute accent represents irregular stress
(which often triggers vowel lengthening).

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(2) itamu mwi mawasa cí ahwita

Itamu REFL hair set high
“Itamu put up her hair”

The three main parts of the construction are the verb cí ‘set, arrange,’ the complement
ahwita ‘high,’ and the object mwi mawasa ‘her hair.’ Intuitively, the verb describes an
event and the complement describes a state that results from the event. The object plays an
important role tying the two together, since it must both undergo the event and end up in
the state; in the example, Itamu’s hair is both the thing that she arranges and the thing that
ends up high. I’ll refer to the object as the shared argument in the construction. (As we’ll
see, the shared argument can actually end up the subject of the clause, it’s not always an
object, syntactically speaking.)

A resultative construction like (2) always describes a single event. It’s not that there was
an event of Itamu doing her hair, and this event caused a separate state of affairs, Itamu’s
hair being up. The resulting state of affairs is better thought of as a part of the event as a
whole.

One last point: Akiatu is otherwise normally SVO, but when a transitive verb occurs with
a resultative complement, you get SOV constituent order.

Resultative complements
There are a few types of resultative complement, and I’ll start by walking you through the
ones I know about so far.

True adjectives
Akiatu has a small, closed class of words that I call true adjectives. They differ from the
other words you might consider adjectives in a few ways: they cannot head their own noun
phrases or be used as predicates; when used attributively, they occur after the head noun
rather than before it; and they can be used as resultative complements.

There are actually few enough true adjectives that I might as well list them:

(3) ahiwa ‘one, alone, solitary, whole’

ahwita ‘tall, high, honoured’
aima ‘bad, ugly, sick, shameful’
amaki ‘good, beautiful, healthy, vigorous, auspicious’
hajji ‘flourishing, lush, fun’
hatau ‘big, important, great’
iruwa ‘two, paired, in two pieces’
kaiwa ‘black, dark, hidden, secret’
mwimu ‘new, green, raw, fresh, naked, pure’
niku ‘white, light, clear, plain, empty, naive’
papai ‘many, much’
sakija ‘red, bright, shining, obvious’
siwi ‘small, young, subtle, unnoticed, nimble, sharp’
ukja ‘short, low, lowly, demeaning’

(1) was one example with an adjectival resultative complement, here’s another:

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(4) kipaja itai jai mwiwu
Kipaja rope make new
“Kipaja made some rope”

There’s a general rule that nothing can fall between the verb and a resultative complement.
Still, in an adjectival complement the adjective can be preceded by intensifiers such as cai
‘all, also, very.’

Resultative clitics
Many resultative complements are clitics: prosodically speaking, they are not independent
words, but rather part of the same phonological word as the verb.

These clitics are distinctive in the following ways:

• they always have a CVCV shape

• they must immediately follow the verb, without even an intensifier like cai in between
• they attract stress to the final syllable of the verb to which they attach; this can trigger
further alternations in the verb
• most of them are transparently related to regular Akiatu verbs, though often with a
shift in meaning or phonological form

Here are some illustrative examples:

(5) =haja ‘gone, used up’ (from aja ‘throw’)

=hiku ‘free, unrestrained’ (from naiku ‘release’)
=jahi ‘complete, fully made’ (from jai ‘do’)
=jaku ‘set in place’ (from ijau ‘set’)
=jasi ‘finished’ (from tijasi ‘tell, recount’)
=kahu ‘broken’ (from makau ‘broken’)
=kaku ‘worn out’ (from wukau ‘worn out’)
=mawa ‘visible, right there’ (from mawa ‘find’)
=rahu ‘satisfied’ (from hirau ‘satisfied’)
=rati ‘tired, hungry’ (from urati ‘tired, hungry’)
=sana ‘full’ (from sana ‘fill’)
=taha ‘aware, awake’ (from nipatá ‘aware, awake’)
=tima ‘ready’ (from ɲatima ‘prepare’)

The shifts in meaning here are mostly unsurprising, given that resultative complements
must be basically stative. Some of the really common ones have also gotten somewhat
bleached, semantically speaking. There’s one common pattern worth mentioning: if the
base verb is transitive, generally the derived resultative complement will be passivised.

The shifts in phonological form mostly serve to satisfy the CVCV template for these clitics.
There are a set of rules that mostly predict the form of a resultative clitic from that of the verb
it derives from, though there are at least a few cases where these rules are not synchronically
productive, and sound changes have treated the verb and the derived clitic differently. The
most important such change is one that reduced some foot-internal VhV sequences, resulting
in a single heavy syllable; resultative clitics did not fall within the scope of this change.

The general rule is that the clitic consists of the final two moras of the base verb, with
consonants added as necessary to fill in the template; extra consonants are often h, though

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they can be k before u. A puzzle I haven’t fully resolved is what to do with words that
have long vowels due to irregular stress patterns. The list above includes taha from ‘nipatá,’
which is one solution, but I’m not sure how general it is.2

Ideophones
Akiatu has lots of ideophones, and one place where they tend to turn up is as resultative
complements. Here’s an example:

(6) itamu kau kaukai

Itamu fall IDEO:splayed_out
“Itamu collapsed”

kaukai describes someone as having fallen and ended up on the ground with their limbs all
splayed out—it’s a result of a fall.

kaukai is plainly a reduplicated form of the verb kau ‘fall’ (alternations between u and i are
common in Akiatu ideophones). I sort of imagine the repeated kau as a sonic representation
of the fall, with the more abrupt kai as the impact; I suppose the kau could be repeated an
arbitrary number of times, for long falls.

kaukai can only occur with kau, never with other verbs, regardless of semantics, and
that’s common with ideophones derived in this sort of way. But there are also ideophones
that combine with verbs more freely. One is hutu:

(7) itamu jaikati tau hutu

Itamu slaver hit startled
“Itamu sucker-punched the slaver”

Ideophones are expressive, often accompanied by exuberance and gesture; (6) and (7) have
a lot more flavour than would paraphrases using other sorts of resultative complement.

Destinations
Here’s a very ordinary motion description:

(8) hjaci kiwa i mikuwitaku

Hjaci go DAT ocean
“Hjaci went to the ocean”

The destination argument here has the semantics of a resultative complement: (8) strictly
entails that Hjaci did arrive at the ocean.

Like other resultative complements, destination arguments trigger SOV constituent order
(see below):
2
In my subreddit post on Footing and stress in Akiatu I said that irregular stress patterns are ignored when
forming resultative clitics, but I’m wavering on this issue. (But that post is a good place to look if you want
more details about this area of Akiatu phonology.)

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(9) aipa hjaci manai kiwa i mikuwitaku
Aipa Hjaci accompany go DAT ocean
“Aipa accompanied Hjaci to the ocean”

A detail: manai ‘accompany,’ like most Akiatu verbs, cannot directly take a destination
complement, which is why it must be followed by kiwa ‘go’ here. I’ll come back to this
issue below; for now you can think of manai kiwa as a sort of compound verb.

Other dative phrases

There’s at least one other context in which postverbal dative phrases can serve as re-
sultative complements, when you’re talking about transformations, one thing turning into
something else:

(10) kija hjaci kijau i aica

and_then Hjaci transform DAT demon
“And then Hjaci turned into a demon”

The argument of a postverbal dative can also be a nominalised clause:

(11) itamu jaimu i aɲai ki wamu sí

Itamu swim DAT rain DET come descend
“Itamu swam until it started raining”

Though this bounds the event being described in much the same way as does a resultative
complement, I would not call this a resultative complement: it introduces a second, inde-
pendent event; there’s no requirement that it share an argument with the main verb; and it
does not trigger SOV order.

I’m a bit inclined to think that you can get genuine resultative complements from nomi-
nalised verbs, but I so far have not come up with any examples.

You can also put an explicit spatial or temporal measure in a dative complement, but this
does not give you a true resultative:

(12) itamu pija i kuti ahiwa

Itamu run DAT day one
“Itamu ran for a whole day”

Again, there’s no shared argument, and in a transitive example the constituent order would
normally be SVO.

The shared argument

An Akiatu resultative construction always includes a constituent that’s a semantic argu-
ment of both the verb and the complement—something that both underwent the event de-
scribed by the verb and ended up in the state described by the complement. That means that

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Akiatu has no direct analogs of a sentence like “He sang the child to sleep”—since “child”
is a semantic argument only of “sleep,” not of “sing.”

The shared argument need not be overt. Akiatu mostly prefers silence to third-person
pronouns, so lots of arguments get dropped. They still get interpreted, however, and can
still serve as the shared argument in a resultative construction. I’m pretty sure you can
also drop some generic objects, though I’m less sure how common this, and I doubt that a
dropped generic argument could be the shared argument in a resultative construction.

The shared argument is always a patient, by which I mean it is always something being
described as undergoing a change. This need not be a momentous change. Changes in
location count, as do changes in status or visibility, so this is a pretty broad conception of
what counts as a patient.

Here are two examples to illustrate this point:

(13) hjaci hakjáku acitau =jaku

Hjaci bonfire bless =set
“Hjaci blessed the bonfire”

(14) itamu tamwipaku mawa =mawa

Itamu canoe look_for =appear
“Itamu found the canoe”

The bonfire undergoes a change of status when it gets blessed; the fact that it’s properly
achieved this new status is expressed by the complement jaku ‘set in place, established.’ The
canoe changes only in relation to Itamu’s knowledge of where it is. This is enough for
Akiatu’s resultative construction.

The shared argument cannot be the agent argument of the verb, so you can’t do something
like this:

(15) *itamu pija =rati

Itamu run =tired
Intended: “Itamu ran till she was tired”

This is so even when it’s plain that the agent of the verb also undergoes a change. (To make
this example grammatical, you’d add a path complement, as in (23).)

The word “agent” here is actually a bit unfortunate, because on this point Akiatu does not
distinguish agents strictly speaking from various other sorts of causal initiator: if a rock hit
you on the head, it would be an ‘agent.’ I hope that’s not too confusing.

In one common pattern, the shared argument in a way measures out the event that’s being
described. Consider this example:

(16) itamu jisaka píwa =haja

Itamu fish eat =away
“Itamu ate the fish”

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In this sort of context, the complement haja ‘away’ tells us that the object is fully consumed
or used up. It seems to follow that when the fish is (for example) half eaten, the event is
half finished; and when the fish is fully eaten, the event is fully finished.

For this to work, the sentence must be referring to some specific quantity of fish. That can
be settled by an overt quantifier. Other cases can get quite subtle, but a lot of the time the
object will be interpreted as definite, even though there won’t normally be any more direct
indication of definiteness.3 That’s why I translate jisaka as “the fish” in (16).

If the verb has two non-agent arguments, both must be shared with the complement. Here’s
a common sort of example:

(17) itamu tamwipaku wata =mawa

Itamu canoe see =appear
“Itamu caught sight of the canoe”

The complement here should be understood to mean that the canoe appeared to Itamu: the
complement shares not only what you might think of as its regular patient (or theme) with
the main verb, but also an oblique argument.

This cannot work if the complement is an adjective, ideophone, or dative phrase, since
these cannot take an additional oblique argument. It follows that when a verb has two
non-agent arguments, it can only occur with resultative clitics.

When the verb is ditransitive, both the agent and one of the shared arguments will precede
the verb, and the other will follow the resultative complement; it must be preceded by a
semantically appropriate preposition. Here’s an example:

(18) itamu ajjiki utika =haja a jaikati

Itamu island hunt =away LOC slavers
“Itamu hunted the island clear of slavers”

utika ‘hunt’ is one of Akiatu’s many verbs that allows a locative complement to be promoted
to a core object. ajjiki ‘island’ is still only an oblique argument of the resultative comple-
ment: the result here is that the slavers were away from the island. (Admittedly that’s a
bit euphemistic: the sentence would normally be interpreted to mean that Itamu killed the
slavers, though admittedly haja could be taken to mean just that they ran away.)

Cases that involve promoted locative arguments can seem very strange if you try to trans-
late them mechanically into English. Here’s one such case:

(19) taukwa aɲai sí =sana

hole rain fall =full
“The hole fell full with rain”
3
Akiatu does have a sort of definite article, but it’s use is quite restricted, and you would not expect it in
a sentence like (16).

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That translation’s not really serious, but I trust you get the point: of course it’s the rain that
fell, while taukwa ‘hole’ is a promoted locative argument of sí ‘fall.’

The rule that transitive resultative clauses be SOV has one sort of partial exception: some-
times the object is split, occurring partly before the verb and partly after the resultative
complement. You often get this with quantified indefinite noun phrases, which normally
put only the quantifier before the verb:

(20) itamu pai píwa =haja jisaka

Itamu three eat =away fish
“Itamu ate three fish”

The deictic particle watí (which would come at the end of the noun phrase) also often stays
after the complement. This can happen even when the object is otherwise dropped:

(21) itamu píwa =haja watí

Itamu eat =away DEIC
“Itamu ate it up”

Object splitting like this never occurs when the shared argument ends up as the verb’s sub-
ject, and it only occurs when the resultative complement is of the clitic sort (and not, for
example, an adjective).

Cases where an object has gotten split are easy to distinguish from cases where a separate
full argument has remained after the verb, because you’ll need a preposition in the latter
case. For example, without the preposition in the following example, it would be tempting
to interpret jaikati aituwi as a discontinuous noun phrase with a possessor, ‘the slaver’s leg’:

(22) itamu jaikati tau =kahu a aituwi

Itamu slaver hit =broken LOC leg
“Itamu broke the slaver’s leg”

Path complements
Akiatu has a class of path verbs, that set out a path along which motion takes place or
along which something is distributed in space; the most common examples are wamu ‘come’
and kiwa ‘go.’ These verbs can be used with resultative complements; they can also occur
directly after another verb, in what you might consider a serial verb construction; and they
can do both of those things at the same time.

(9) showed one example of this. Here’s another:

(23) itamu pija kiwa =rati

Itamu run go =tired
“Itamu ran herself tired”

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 Contrasting (23) with (15), you can see that one function path complements serve is to
allow the use of resultative complements with agentive intransitives like pija ‘run.’ The
complement lets you code the verb’s agent also as a patient, which means it can then serve
as the shared argument in a resultative construction.

That presumes that the argument of a path verb is a patient rather than an agent. This
is deeply counterintuitive to many people, the thought being that it’s normally agents that
come and go. But it’s cross-linguistically common to treat these arguments as patients, and
that’s certainly what Akiatu does.

This use of path verbs is significant for a second reason, because only path verbs can take
destination arguments, so you also get contrasts like the following:

(24) *itamu pija i ikjamí

Itamu run DAT river
Intended: “Itamu ran to the river”

(25) itamu pija kiwa i ikjamí

Itamu run go DAT river
“Itamu ran to the river”

(But (24) is grammatical with the meaning ‘Itamu ran towards the river.’)

A path complement cannot be used to introduce a whole new arguments, its patient must
also be an argument of the preceding verb.

Both wamu ‘come’ and kiwa ‘go’ can be used with fairly bleached meanings, something
like ‘become.’ (They can also be used as main verbs in a similarly bleached way.) Sometimes
other path verbs can add a particular nuance. For example, pai ‘return’ can be used to
describe a result as a return to a prior state:

(26) itamu suwasu pai mwimu

Itamu sleep return new
“Itamu slept and was refreshed”

Sometimes it look like a path complement is serving on its own as a resultative comple-
ment:

(27) itamu kau sí

Itamu fall descend
“Itamu fell down”

What’s really happening here is that the destination argument of sí is being dropped because
it’s clear from context: obviously Itamu fell to the ground.

Incidentally, to a large extent the difference between kau ‘fall’ and sí ‘descend’ is just that
the latter is but the former is not a path verb. (kau is also mostly used for atypical or
unexpected falls—you’d rarely if ever use it to describe rain, for example.)

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In terms of the typology of motion description in particular, what all this means is that
Akiatu can encode both manner and path with verbs, but there are no verbs that encode
both.

Arguably, though, Akiatu still counts as what’s been called a verb-framed language. That’s
because the verbs that are used to encode manner of motion are arguably peripheral, despite
being verbs. They cannot on their own select destination or source arguments. Motion de-
scriptions often omit manner entirely, or encode manner in an adverbial phrase rather than
with a verb. And I think no manner of motion verb strictly entails motion through space,
or indeed any analogous sort of change. For example, you can satu miku ‘walk water’; this
is treading water, and mostly doesn’t involve moving from one place to another. In this ex-
pression, satu describes the bodily movements involved, not any movement. (Incidentally,
I’d analyse satu miku as involving a covert locative applicative.)

Nonetheless, there are probably those who’d prefer to class Akiatu as a serialising language
rather than a verb framed or satellite framed one, and I certainly don’t think the above
considerations tell decisively against such a classification.

Aspect
Akiatu’s resultative construction interacts with both lexical and viewpoint aspect, so I’ll
discuss both issues. I wish I could also include what you might call phasal aspect, words
with meanings like ‘start’ and ‘finish,’ but I don’t yet have anything significant to say about
that area of Akiatu grammar.

Lexical aspect
An event described by a resultative complement has an intrinsic result; to put the point
another way, it is telic.

In what you might think of as the canonical case, the event is what’s called an accom-
plishment. That means it includes both a process or activity stage and a resulting change
of state. Many of the examples I’ve already give are naturally interpreted as describing
accomplishments. Here’s another:

(28) tamwi hakjaru =haja

wood burn =away
“The wood burned away”

Out of context it’s hard to be sure, but you might well expect this to describe an extended
process of burning leading up to a state where the wood is entirely gone.

A particular feature of this case is that the change of state is concurrent with the process
that it results from—so we can say that when the burning is half finished, the wood is half
gone. It’s in precisely this sort of case that we can say that the object measures the event
being described.

Here’s a different sort of example:

(29) hjaci itamu tau =taha

Hjaci Itamu hit =awake
“Hjaci woke itamu up”

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Now, waking Itamu up may have been quite a process (Itamu was a powerful sleeper). But
it’s not a process that’s half finished when half of Itamu is awake, not even necessarily when
Itamu is half awake: it could just as well a process that terminates when the intended change
suddenly takes place all at once, or there may not have been an extended process at all.

With more context, you can get cases where it’s clearly implied that an extended process
preceded the change of state, but the resultative sentence itself does not actually say that
the process took place. Anticipating the next section a bit, here’s a case like that:

(30) siwi jai hakjaru tamwi ||

1PL CAUS burn wood
tamwi hakjaru ma wí arai ||
wood burn and pass wait
kijasi tamwi hakjaru =haja
finally wood burn =away
“We set the wood on fire, and waited while it burned. Finally it burned away.”

This describes a burning process, but the wood burning away is situated after that burning
process, which is to say that the final resulative sentence here encodes only the final state,
not the preceding process.

There are other sorts of case where normally you wouldn’t want to distinguish between
the event leading up to a change of state and the change of state itself. Inchoatives (which
I’ll come back to later) are a clear sort of case. Another involves verbs that usually describe
events without salient duration:

(31) hjaci tanija tau =kahu

Hjaci pot hit =broken
“Hjaci broke the pot”

Here, possibly unlike (29), the verb tau ‘hit’ does not seem to encode anything other than
the moment of contact.

Akiatu encodes many semelfactives using light verb constructions, and these can occur
with resultative complements. You wouldn’t normally think this implies a salient contrast
between initial process and ensuing change:

(32) itamu xacau hatau aja =haja

Itamu sneeze big throw =out
“Itamu let out a great sneeze”

In all the cases I’ve discussed so far, the activity or process that brings about the result in
question concludes when the result is achieved. That’s not always the case:

(33) kija itamu pija kiwa =haja

and_then Itamu run go =away
“And Itamu ran off”

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Itamu was away once she’d left the topic location; but the sentence certainly doesn’t imply
that she then immediately stopped running.

Viewpoint aspect
Viewpoint aspect situates a described event with respect to a topic time. I’ll start with
perfectivity.

You sometimes see people say that perfective descriptions present events from an external
perspective, without regard to their internal structure. Since telic descriptions inherently
do focus an event’s internal structure, definitions like that would be very misleading here.
So I’ll start with another common sort of definition: a verb phrase is perfective just in case
it situates the event it describes entirely within the topic time.

I still need to adjust this definition a bit. In cases like (30) and (33), it can be a subtle issue
whether the event as a whole really gets situated within the topic time. Take (33). There
was a running event that presumably continued after Itamu was away, and you wouldn’t
expect that event as a whole to be situated within the topic time. You could say that the
sentence strictly only describes the initial segment of Itamu’s running, up to the point when
she was away; but this looks like perfectivity putting bounds on the event, so it can’t be
because the event has those bounds that it counts as perfective. Instead, I’ll assume that a
verb phrase can pick out some stage or transition in an event as especially salient, and then
if the clause is perfective, that stage must fall within the topic time, even if the event as a
whole does not.

Thinking of perfectivity this way can help understand cases like (30). You would normally
expect tamwi hakjaru=haja ‘the wood burned away’ to describe both the extended process
of the wood burning and the point when it is eventually all gone; but in a sequence like the
one in (30), it’s only the final point that’s clearly situated within the topic time. (No doubt
the inclusion of kijasi ‘finally’ helps here.)

In any case, it’s a general rule of Akiatu grammar that a verb phrase is perfective whenever
it includes a resultative complement, unless some higher operator forces a non-perfective
interpretation. There are plenty of verbs that will normally get a perfective interpretation
regardless, but with other verbs, a resultative complement will often be what makes the
difference between a perfective and an imperfective meaning.

Here’s an illustrative pair:

(34) itamu jaikati paja =jaku

Itamu slaver tie =set
“Itamu tied up the slaver”

(35) itamu paja jaikati

Itamu tie slaver
“Itamu was tying the slaver”

When paja ‘tie, restrain’ is used on its own, it defaults to imperfective, as in (35); in (34),
the resultative complement secures a perfective meaning.

(That’s not the only way to get a perfective meaning with verbs that are imperfective by
default. You can also use the other sorts of dative complement mentioned above. There’s

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also got to be some sort of perfective auxiliary for cases where neither sort of complement
would be semantically appropriate. Currently I’m using wí for that purpose—it occurred in
(30) above—but I’m not sure that’ll stick. There are also verbs that are perfective by default.
These can still take resultative complements when semantically appropriate, as we’ve seen
above in examples using tau ‘hit’ and aja ‘throw,’ which are both verbs of this sort. But
they’d be perfective even without the resultative complements.)

I so far know of two auxiliaries that can be used to generate an imperfective meaning even
in the presence of a resulative complement: the progressive auxiliary ijau (otherwise ‘sit’),
and habitual wicu (‘lie down’). These get used as follows:

(36) itamu jaikati ijau paja =jaku

Itamu slaver PROG tie =set
“Itamu was tying up the slaver”

(37) itamu wicu jaikati paja =jaku

Itamu HAB slaver tie =set
“Itamu would (often) tie slavers up”

(I’ve put the object before ijau and after wicu. My current thinking requires the object to
precede ijau, but allows either order with wicu; but this is an area where the grammar’s
still a bit up in the air.)

In contrast to (34), (36) does not situate the point where the slaver has been fully re-
strained within the topic time. Indeed, it no longer entails that this point ever got reached.
However, in contrast to (35), it does mention the event’s endpoint—the description is telic,
even though it does not entail culmination. With (37), it’s more like the sentence describes
an indefinite sequence of events, each of which did culminate; it’s the sequence as a whole
that’s not bounded.

(Two tangents I won’t follow up. First, I’m pretty sure ijau can also get an iterative in-
terpretation, though I’m not at all sure under what conditions. And there’s a third postural
auxiliary, aki ‘stand,’ that I’ve always thought of as having a modal rather than an aspectual
meaning, but maybe I should include it here.)

The pija kiwa=haja case is again interesting:

(38) itamu ijau pija kiwa =haja

Itamu PROG run go =away
“Itamu was running off”

I’m inclined to say that in this case the point at which Itamu left the topic location might
be included in the topic time, and in that case the difference between perfective and imper-
fective is a bit puzzling. Maybe in perfective run-away the start of the event also has to be
included in the topic time.

I’ll mention one other aspectual category, the perfect. Akiatu mikwa ‘already’ often results
in a sort of perfect (unlike English “already” it does not imply that the event took place
earlier than expected). With resultative constructions in particular, mikwa often gives you
a resultative perfect, where the sentence specifically describes a resulting state. Like this:

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(39) jisaka cai mikwa píwa =haja

fish all already eat =away
“The fish has all been eaten”

In this example, the verb is no longer transitive: the agent has dropped out. That’s common
with mikwa resultative perfects, and it’s not hard to understand why: the resulting state is a
state of the object, and you’ll often be interested in the state of the object without especially
caring about who put it in that state.

Which brings me to my next topic.

Valency
Akiatu resultatives interact with at least three sorts of valency alternation: passives, causatives,
and inchoatives. I’ll discuss these in turn.

Passives
A we’ve just seen, agentive transitive verbs can often be used intransitively. This is espe-
cially common with resultative constructions, particlurly when some other element of the
sentence, like mikwa ‘already,’ puts additional focus on the resulting situation. (Two other
adverbs with similar effects are ihu ‘almost’ and kijasi ‘finally.’)

Here’s another illustrative pair:

(40) hjaci hakjáku acatau =jaku

Hjaci bonfire bless =set
“Hjaci blessed the bonfire”

(41) hakjáku acatau =jaku

bonfire bless =set
“The bonfire was blessed”

Because Akiatu usually drops pronominal objects, these passives are systematically am-
biguous, at least superficially; for example, (41) could in principle also mean ‘the bonfire
blessed them.’ Context and good sense are usually enough to prevent misunderstanding;
when they are not, postverbal watí will often surface as a remnant of the dropped object.

I have two reasons for thinking that in these cases it’s the transitive use that’s basic. First,
this is an alternation that’s systematically available for transitive verbs with agentive sub-
jects, but there are plenty of patientive intransitives that require an overt causative construc-
tion if they are to be used transitively. Second, the intransitive variants of these sentences
still imply the presence of an agent. This can be seen in the use of certain adverbials, as in
this example:

(42) ijaisa makisa makisa aki naiku =hiku

bat upright RDP stand release =free
“The bats were let go on purpose”

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It’s not the bats who are described here as acting on purpose, but the unnamed agent who
let them go.

As I’ve implied, these passives are only available for verbs whose subjects are agents,
loosely speaking, though verbs whose subjects are experiencers or locations often undergo
alternations that are superficially similar (which I’ll discuss below).

It’s a relatively recent decision to let this alternation be fully productive. Akiatu canoni-
cally also has a periphrastic passive formed with wata ‘see,’ I’m not yet sure how that relates
to the passives I’m discussing here.

Causatives
I’m not talking here about the causatives you can form with jai ‘do’ or hwati ‘give’ with a
full verb phrase as complement. But there are plenty of resultative constructions that have
a causative sense, so I’ll mention those here.

More or less any time the verb in a resultative construction is an agentive transitive, you’ll
have a causative of sorts: the subject acts, and as a result the object undergoes a change.
Here though I’m thinking especially of cases where the verb doesn’t obviously contribute
anything except a causative sense.

This happens especially often with jai ‘do’:

(43) hau marasi kja hau jai =rahu watí

1SG think C 1SG do =satisfied DEIC

“I think I satisfied them”

I’ve been ignoring the morphophonology of clitic complements, but maybe I should men-
tion that because of the stress shift they require, jai=rahu actually surfaces as járahu, a
single phonological word. The accent indicates irregular stress (though here what’s actually
irregular is that the verb has to form a foot with the first syllable of the clitic). Now, ir-
regular stress can fall on the antepenult only in what were originally compounds, and most
such compounds are synchronically transparent, since stress will tend to shift as they get
thoroughly lexicalised. Still, it looks like an awfully short step from a syntactically derived
form such as járahu to a morphologically unanalysable lexical item.

The main other verb that I’ve noticed acting as a causative in these constructions is tau ‘hit.’
For example, tau=taha ‘hit awake’ just means ‘wake (someone) up,’ without any indication
of manner. tau has this use with a relatively restricted range of complements, and I expect
the same will be true of any other verbs I discover with resulative/causative uses.

As with resultative constructions in general, a causative like (43) describes only a single
event, so the idea is not that the speaker did something, and that caused the people to be
satisfied. For more indirect causation, you have to use the construction with an auxiliary;
the difference can be a bit subtle, though, since that auxiliary might well be jai.

Finally, these causatives can be passivised as discussed in the previous section; for example,
jai=rahu can mean ‘they were satisfied.’

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 Akiatu's resultatives

Inchoatives
Akiatu’s inchoative alternation involves a change in the semantics of a verb’s argument,
not the number of arguments, but I’m still going to consider that a valency alternation.

The main pattern is fairly straightforward: a stative verb gets used with a resulative com-
plement, and this induces it to take on an inchoative sense. Here’s an example:

(44) itamu suwasu =wasu

Itamu asleep =asleep
“Itamu fell asleep”

In that example, the resultative complement is derived from the very verb that’s being
used. This is by far the most common pattern with inchoatives, and (it will turn out) it’s no
coincidence that it looks just like a sort of partial reduplication.

Diachronics
I can so far only sketch the history of these constructions. Here goes.

As noted above, clitic complements can involve some morphophonological surprises. I’d
like to be able to explain those in detail, but my sound changes aren’t sufficiently settled for
me to do that, unfortunately.

Syntactically, I see Akiatu’s resultative construction as having a few separate sources. Most
interesting are the cases that involve some sort of reduplication.

First is the partial reduplication of stative verbs to give an inchoative sense, which has
been productive for at least several centuries. This is the source of the CVCV template for
clitic complements (both that and the specific ways in which CVCV clitics are derived from
full verbs are modeled after fairly standard sorts of partial reduplication).

Second, some transitive verbs took on distinctive meanings when fully reduplicated. The
main cases I’m sure of are mawa mawa ‘look for and find’ from mawa ‘find,’ and aja haja
‘throw away’ (with epenthetic h) from aja throw. These forms do not initially involve any
cliticisation. However, as a coincidence, the verbs that got this treatment the earliest already
satisfied the CVCV reduplication template (or did once an epenthetic initial h got added).

Third, the collapse of Gagur’s system of auxiliaries maybe 1500 years before led to a
new perfective construction that involved a new auxiliary and a nominalised verb. The
most common pattern would be for the verb to be nominalised by full reduplication; if the
verb was transitive, the object would be encoded by an inalienable possessor, which meant
putting it directly before the verb.

Fourth and finally, some verbs underwent idiosyncratic sound-symbolic reduplication, giv-
ing rise to a sort of ideophone complement, often with resultative semantics.

The full Akiatu system arose when these four constructions merged, both semantically
and syntactically, and both with each other and with destination arguments and (adjectival)
resultative secondary predicates. Here are some of the changes required for this merger:

• The CVCV template and cliticising prosody had to spread from the inchoative construc-
tion to reduplication of the mawa mawa type, helped by the fact that most of those

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 verbs already satisfied the template.
• The new perfective auxiliary had to be lost, and the remaining N V V structure, origi-
nally a possessor followed by a nominalised verb, had to become an OV structure. And
the CVCV template and cliticising prosody had to spread to these cases as well.
• The semantics of the perfective structure had to narrow and become specifically re-
sulative; the appearance of a new perfective auxiliary (maybe wí) might have helped
this along
• Some of the CVCV reduplicants had to degrammaticalise to the extent that they could
be used as clitics attached to verbs other than their original reduplication base. Mean-
while, reduplicants that did not easily yield a resultative sense had to drop out of use
or undergo idiosyncratic semantic developments.
• The OV order had to spread to all of these cases, including also those with destination
arguments or with adjectival resultative secondary predicates.
• The requirement that a resultative complement directly follow the verb, which you get
automatically with reduplication, had to spread to adjectival and dative resultatives.

Parts of this will be tricky to work out in detail, but the overall picture is sufficiently
plausible, I think.

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 Coming Attractions
Thank you for reading Segments! We hope you will join us again for Issue #03:

Noun Constructions

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Keep your eyes out for announcements in different conlang communities with more details
on content guides, submission guidelines, deadlines, and more!

In the meantime, start thinking up ideas on what you may want to explore about how nouns
& noun phrases work in your language!
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 Segments.
PROJECT MANAGER Lysimachiakis

EDITORS Lysimachiakis
Miacomet
Slorany
Allen
Kilenc

LAYOUT ARTIST Slorany

INITIAL REVIEWERS Lysimachiakis

Miacomet

PROOFREADERS Lysimachiakis
tryddle
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Intended as both an educational resource and a way to showcase the
best work the r/conlangs community had to offer, Segments. was
started in 2020 on an initiative by u/Lysimachiakis and u/Slorany,
with great amounts of help from the rest of the subreddit’s modera‐
tion team.