Introduction - Sound changes - Phonology - Nominal morphology - Verbal Morphology - Syntax - Sample text - Lexicon - Appendix

ɑˈgɑf language

Verbal morphology

Verbs are probably the part of Ayasth which has been subjected to the most critical changes. The polypersonal marking had been lost, the morphosyntactic alignment became ergative-absolutive, and lot of internal reorganisation and analogical reanalysis occured.

Stem, citation and non finite form

The ɑˈgɑf verb only has one stem, which always ends in a vowel, and is apparent from the citation form of the verb. Said citation form is the verbal noun, formed with the suffix -ŋɛɴ (triggers e/i/ɛɪ umlaut).

Finite verb

Structure of the finite verb :
preverb - mood - stem - personal ending (also maked for aspect and voice).

There is only one possible preverb, the prefix øɰ-. It doesn't have any meaning by itself, it is used in combination with the personal endings to tell the voice of the verb.

Moods :

Indicative : The action described by the verb is happening.
(unmarked)

Optative : There's an urge or an obligation for the action described by the verb to happen.
uk- (umlaut sensible)

Subjonctive : The action may happen under certain circumstances.
d(ø)-

Conditional : The occurence of this action is the condition for the occurence of another action.
otγ-

Negative : The action isn't happening.
pu- (umlaut sensible)

Personal endings :

They comes in two set (simply named I and II), and know two aspects, perfective (the action is over) and imperfective (the action described is not over).

		Set I	Set II
Perfective	1SG	-øɴ	-nøɴ
	2SG	-ŋɔɴ	-nøɴ
	3SG	-øɴ	-nøɴ
	1PL	-i	-di
	2PL	-go	-dø
	3PL	-ø	-dø
Imperfective	1SG	-nyɴ	-tʰyɴ
	2SG	-døŋɔɴ	-tʰøŋɔɴ
	3SG	-nyɴ	-tʰyɴ
	1PL	-døhi	-tʰøhi
	2PL	-døgo	-tʰøgo
	3PL	-dy	-tʰy

1st person perfective forms trigger the e/i/ɛɪ umlaut. 3rd person perfective forms trigger the ɑ/ʲɑ umlaut. 2nd person perfective forms trigger the ɔ/æʊ umlaut (in set I) or the ɑ/ʲɑ umlaut (in set II). All the imperfective forms trigger the e/i/ɛɪ umlaut.

Voice :

To know the voice of the verb, one must look both at the preverb and the personal endings :

	Set I	Set II
Preverb	Causative	Active
No preverb	Antipassive	Reflexive

Active voice : The subject performs the action.

Causative voice : The subject causes the object to perform the action.

Antipassive voice : Same as causative, but the object can be left out.

Reflexive voice : The subject causes itself to perform the action.

Notice : the verbs are organised so that the active voice is always intransitive. This result in a lot of verbs having "be X(ed)" as a basic meaning. This actually had become a very productive meaning to create new verbs, leading the actual verb "to be" to fell out of use (but see below).

When a noun or an adjective ends in a consonant, an -ɑ is added to the root in order to turn it into a verb.

The negating auxiliary

A remnant of the verb "to be", used when one wants to negate another mood than the indicative. It has three basic forms :
-ˈmɑɴtʰæ- negates the optative
-ɑˈdɑtʰæ- negates the subjonctive
-ɑˈsɑtʰæ- negates the conditional

Otherwise, it conjugates like a normal verb, but does not take any modal prefix.