Grammar of |
Verbs are the keys to understanding and using
Tuliñgrai. The verb is the most important part of
speech because (1) nearly every other part of speech is formed from a
verb stem, (2) nearly every other part of speech may be manifested as a
verb, and (3) the verb is the heart of the sentence. It is the only
part of speech which can form a sentence by itself, and every sentence
must have a verb to be complete.
In this section we will learn the proper use of verbs, verbal prefixes,
and participles. The things for which they are inflected shall be
explained and criteria given so that you can always known which inflection
should be used.
The verb stem is the heart of the verb. It supplies the basic meaning of the verb. Verb stems are almost always two syllables long, with both syllables open (not ending in a consonant). A few verbs have closed first syllables; a few others are more than two syllables, with some of the syllables other than the last one closed. But most verbs are two open syllables long, and belong to one of ten classes:
You may wonder how "island" can be a verb. A better
question would be how do other languages avoid making it one? When
you say "Hawaii is an island," you use the English verb "is" as a linking
verb, hooking "Hawaii" to "island" in a way that is understood by
English and most other languages. Thus the verb "to be", in
English, has a second usage with no intrinsic meaning but to link other
words together. Tuliñgrai does not do that.
The Tuliñgrai verb lohi means "to be, to exist."
It is never used as a "linking verb." To say "Hawaii is an
island," we use "Hawaii" as the subject of the sentence and "island" as
the verb: Hawaiiai zuhekex.
Note also that many Tuliñgrai verbs have related
meanings, differing only in their classes; for instance lanto,
to be blue, lante, the color blue; lôlê,
water, and lôla, to water, to pour water on
something. You may also regard this as evidence that the verb
stem is made up of a root which contains the meaning and an affix which
determines the class of the stem, and you would not be wrong.
However, the dictionary lists the verb stems, not their deeper roots.
Words in Tuliñgrai are "built up" from verb stems with
affixes attached that define the part of speech and other elements of
meaning. A verb may be described schematically as
No verb is complete without all these parts. A few verbs,
notably verbs of weather, need nothing else to form a complete sentence.
| Voice | |
|---|---|
| Active | Z |
| Passive | S |
If the subject of the sentence does the action, the verb
is active; if the subject has the action done to it, the verb is
passive. For example, in "The boy flew the kite," "flew" is
active; but if we say "The kite was flown by a boy," "was flown" is
passive. The meaning is interchangeable but the expression and the
emphasis is not; the first sentence revolves around the boy and what he's
doing, while the second is concerned mostly with the kite. Only
transitive verbs can be passive, because passive has no meaning for the
other classes.
| Mood | |
|---|---|
| Indicative | U |
| Infinitive | A |
| Subjunctive | O |
| Imperative | I |
| Interrogative | E |
| Numative | EI |
| Nonnative | È |
| Potential | Ô |
| Conditional | AI |
| Certain | Y |
| Expectational | Ê |
Mood shows whether a verb is a command, a question, wish, statement of fact, or some other kind of statement. It has nothing to do with the time the verb occurs, whether it's complete or note, whether it's active or passive, etc.
The Indicative mood is used for statements of facts and opinions. It is the most common verbal mood. "The boy flew the kite" is a statement in the indicative mood.
The Infinitive mood is used for verbs dependent on other verbs ("He is able to fly a kite"), and in dependent clauses answers "Why?" or "To do what?" ("He struggled to fly the kite."). In English the infinitive is usually signalled by the word "to" placed before the verb.
The Subjunctive expresses a wish ("I would I could fly a kite!") or a condition contrary to fact ("If only I could fly a kite!").
The Imperative is used for commands and orders, e.g., "Go fly a kite!"
The Interrogative is used for neutral questions, where neither yes nor no is the preferred answer: "Is he flying a kite?"
If a question expects a negative answer, the Numative mood is used: "He isn't flying a kite, is he?" ("No" expected)
If a question expects a positive answer, the Nonnative mood is used: "He's flying a kite, isn't he?" ("Yes" expected)
The Potential translates "may" or "might", as in "He may be flying a kite," or "He might fly a kite." If the "then" part of an "if-then" statement is not certain, the potential mood is used, as in "then he might fly it."
The Conditional mood translates the "if" part of an "if-then" statement, for example, "If you give that boy a kite ..."
The Certain mood translates the "then" part of an "if-then" statement if the outcome is certain, as in "then he would fly it."
A verb in the Expectational mood preceded by the particle
tal denotes events not expected to happen, that occur anyway; Tal
tluzêjodix, "So he's coming after all (we thought he
wasn't going to). The particle An before a verb in the
expectational mood means that the event was expected to happen, and then
didn't; An tluzêjodix, "But he was going to come (and now it
turns out that he didn't).
| Directness | |
|---|---|
| Direct | — |
| Reflexive | Ñ |
If the action of a transitive verb is done to someone or something else,
or the verb is not transitive, it is direct and no morpheme occurs at
this location. If the verb is transitive and the action is performed
upon the subject of the sentence by the subject of the sentence, the
verb is reflexive and ñ occurs at this location in the
verb. "He told her" is direct; "He told himself" is reflexive,
and in Tuliñgrai requires no word for "himself"; it's
supplied in the English translation because English requires it.
| Tense | |
|---|---|
| Present | D |
| Past | N |
| Perfect | M |
| Pluperfect | Ñ |
| Future | S |
| Future Perfect | Σ |
| Present/Future | ST |
| Present/Past | ND |
| Past/Future | NS |
| Timeless | X |
Tuliñgrai has both simple and compound tenses. The
simple tenses are similar to those of English: Present, as in
"He is flying a kite" or "He flies the kite," Past, as in "He
flew the kite," Perfect, "He has flown the kite," Future,
"He'll fly a kite," and Future Perfect, "He will have flown
the kite." None of these should give English users any trouble,
except for the common practice today of reversing the past and perfect
tenses. Ignoramuses who say "I seen him" and "I have saw him" and
"I would have saw him" will mistranslate Tuliñgrai tenses
the same way they mangle their own language.
But Tuliñgrai also has compound tenses for events that
occur at more than one time; Present/Future means an action
that occurs in the present and continues in the future, but did not
happen in the past; this is particularly useful in imperatives to denote
that something must be done from now on, regardless of whether it was
done in the past. Present/Past denotes action in the past
and present, but not the future. Past/Future tense is used
for action that occurs in the past and future, but not in the present.
Finally, the Timeless tense is used if an action occurs in past,
present, and future; if the time when an action occurs is irrelevant; and
in proverbs.
With no more knowledge of grammar than this, and a little vocabulary,
you can make complete statements about the weather: zulumaid, "it's
thundering", zusaxaiñ, "it had snowed", even zesatais?
"will it rain?" But you can't say "it's not thundering,"
"it snowed hard," or even "it's hardly raining." For
that we need adverbs.
Adverbs (words that modify the meaning of verbs) are formed in
Tuliñgrai by adding R to the end of the adverbial verb
stem. The resulting word follows the verb it modifies, for example
zulumaid stetyr, "it's thundering loudly", zusaxain mivyr,
"it snowed hard", or zusatais kusyr, "it will rain hardly at
all." Verb stems ending in Y are hardly ever expressed in any
other way than this.
Note that you could frame the examples in the preceding paragraph
in terms of an event noun and an adjectival verb: eilumai zustetod,
"The thunder is loud," eisaxai zumivon, "The snowfall was
hard," or eisatai zukusos, "The rain will be light." The
choice of which way to express the thought is a matter of style.
Simpler, better Tuliñgrai generally results from preferring
to express the verbal meaning as a verb, otherwise the adjectival meaning,
otherwise the substantive meaning. Nouns that begin in EI are event
nouns, a good signal to express them as verbs unless there is some reason
in emphasis, parallel expression, or poetic scansion to do otherwise.
The negative particle tê has an adverbial function but
differs from adverbs by not ending in YR. Also, like all particles,
it precedes the word or clause it modifies, instead of following it as
adjectives and adverbs do. For example, tê zusumaind,
"it wasn't and isn't foggy." (It's easy to spot particles;
they're the only one-syllable words in Tuliñgrai.)