Wednesday 16 June 2010

Transitions

Kareyku doesn't use pronominal affixes per se. Although it does have independent pronouns the verb is inflected with what are called "transitions". The transitions indicate the "who to whom" character of the verb. There are 3 main transitions:

From 1st person to someone else
From 2nd person to someone else
From 3rd person to someone else

In the last two cases independent pronouns are provided to avoid confusion when needed. The logic for Kareyku speakers behind this is that you can only know your intentions. When someone has a present only the giver can know if you are going to give the present to me or to him, hence, the most complete transitions are from the first person, the one I'm sure.

Transition 1 is expressed by infix -ka
Transition 2 is expressed by infix -da
Transition 3 is expressed by infix -ta

This transitions are only for the Present tense. Kareyku doesn't use a negative particle, there are two different conjugations, positive and negative, for each tense. The negatives being:

Transition 1 is expressed by infix -ke
Transition 2 is expressed by infix -de
Transition 3 is expressed by infix -te

So, if you have the verb qappa 'to eat', qappaka means 'I eat (it)'. If you use pilé meaning 'fish' then you get qappaka pilé 'I eat fish' and the negative would be qappake pilé 'I don't eat fish'. The transitions are needed even when there is a subject present, and intransitive verbs take a transition as a subject but regardless the object. Thus, qappaka, can mean 'I eat (it)' as well as 'I am eating'.

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