Showing posts with label transitions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label transitions. Show all posts

Saturday, 22 December 2012

Admonitive mood

The Admonitive is a rare mood I must confess, it is a somewhat cousin to the Imperative but asking for someone to grant permission to do something. In any case it implies the meaning of "letting someone do something", instead of complete commanding of something. As it adds an argument it stands quite differently from the imperative, it does not have a particular transition all to itself, but rather uses a suffix attached to a transition. Let's get a look at it:

If I can say:

tanakas, I speak

You can use the imperative: tananma, speak!

Or the admonitive: tanakabin, let me speak!

You could also add a pronoun, so you would get:

shiran tanakebin, don't let me speak to him!

And you can take it a step further:

yaran tanatebinsi, don't let him speak to me! (Using the factual evidential)

Historically one might argue that the suffix started off as a particle that quickly got fossilized into the verb. This particular mood is mostly used to ask any kind of permission and also in very polite contexts to allow for the recipient to grant a good wish upon the speaker. More on that soon.

Wednesday, 12 December 2012

Imperative mood

The imperative mood has a particular form in Kareyku. In essence it only works for the second person and it's the same whether it is singular or plural. The form it uses is somewhat strange due to historical changes which I will not discuss here (but may in the future). The form is: -nma, and it is inflected just like any other well-born transition has been inflected up to this point.

ikan tokinma!, protect me!

qappanma shu!, eat up!

You may ask yourself if one can use it in the passive, well yes you can. The form would be then;

tokeyma!, be protected!

I'm imagining it would be used as a kind of farewell or good wish. Note how the -n- drops but the infix remains the same. Now you may be wondering if the detransitive suffix will cause any problems, since it is essentially an -l- and it creates quite a pickle there. The answer is, the -nma applies for both transitive and intransitive verbs alike:

marinma!, come!

tinma!, do it!

tananma!, speak!

And so, the imperative can be used in all the tenses, but this would be very hard for me to explain without resorting to Ancient Greek. I will expand on this delicate item later on.

Thursday, 15 November 2012

Detransitive suffix

You've read right, I meant a suffix that "detransitivizes" the verb if that has any sense at all. Bear with me, what I mean is that all Kareyku verbs are naturally transitive or ditransitive, but what if you need an intransitive verb? Well, you would use this crafty suffix to reduce the arguments to zero. The suffix, of course, takes all evidentials (and it will) and transitions, its form is an -l- inserted before the corresponding transition and we can see some examples:

We have our always useful verb qappa- "eat", normally we would use a transition;

qappata, he eats

But this actually means literally "he eats (something)", it implies that he's eating something, like a fish, meat, vegetables (yeah, right!) or something. When we use this suffix, though, we get;

qappalta, he eats

In this other case I'm just stating that he eats. It can mean "he eats (everyday)" or "he eats" (i.e. "he can eat"), it means all the other uses that are intransitive. So for example;

kolto marilta, he comes here

Of course we can inflect it for time, so one would treat the -ta as a normal transition, thus;

kolto marilten, he didn't come here

pokolto marilteyos, he shall come home

We can even further inflect it for the desiderative form:

taro mariltaltech, "father doesn't want to come"

Let's leave the entry with a final weird sentence:

pole nakem lau lopalkas, "I live on top of a great tree"

Thursday, 1 November 2012

Suffixes revisited: The Desiderative Suffix


The Desiderative is properly a mood, not a tense, in Kareyku it is an infix that's attached to the verb and precedes the transition. This suffix is a reworking of a previous suffix I've mentioned, I'll make sure to straighten the whole thing up. In any case, the suffix is -tal- and we have some examples:

qappaka, I eat

qappatalka, I want to eat

This is how the Desiderative form works, pretty simple. If you want to negate the verb, you simply apply the negative transitions and you are done:

qappatalke, I don't want to eat

yeppatalke, I don't want to serve

This applies for all transitions and evidentials, of course;

inech yeppatalken, "yesterday I didn't want to attend you"

And we can even further apply other moods or voices, such as the passive;

kolla tokeytaltas, "the country wants to be protected"

Having set free this infix, I thought of reworking it into something much more useful such as this Desiderative form. In this way, nothing has been lost but a useful tool has been created to form such sentences as;

kollakume tokeytaltach, "for the sake of the country he wants to be protected"

Sunday, 7 August 2011

Kareyku verbs, Direct/inverse voice

Recently I've decided to lean towards a direct/inverse voice in Kareyku. This would allow for potentially better structures and leads to new options in expression. I've decided the flow should follow a hierarchy, so with this new plan the transitions would be:

  1. 1st > someone, -ka
  2. 2nd > someone (3rd, 3rd.a), -da
  3. 3rd > someone (3rd.a), -ta

This would go for the direct voice, the inverse voice would reverse the flow, so, with the inverse you would have:

  1. 1st < someone, -talka
  2. 2nd < someone, -talda
  3. 3rd < someone, -talta

So in this new plan there is more clarity but at the same time I've managed to preserve the ambiguities. And the infix only reverts the hierarchical flow in 1 step. So a sentence would look like:
qorikas, qoritalkas?
I love you, do you love me?

With the proper evidentials. It is worth noting that the inverse could be taken as "do you love me" or even "am I loved?" if you decide to use the 3rd person, you get a kind of impersonal or passive construction.
qoritaltan
Someone loves him, I hear.
If clarity is needed, pronouns should be used. Maybe pen toritalkas? would appear clearer to avoid confusion, although context may make them unnecessary, as Kareyku is a pro-drop language with a lot of contextual information needed.


Wednesday, 10 November 2010

The Future Tense

Under the new development of Kareyku we would only have 3 transitions according to hierarchy. The Future Tense would be expressed then:

1. expressed by infix -keyo-
2. expressed by infix -deyo-
3. expressed by infix -teyo-

Pretty simple, this would get us such constructions as:

qappakeyo I will eat
tokiteyo He will protect

Further developed with evidentials:

qappakeyo-s  I will eat (fact)
oshan tokiteyo-n I hear he will protect them
tanadeyo-ch You will speak to him (I assume)

As for their negative forms:


1. expressed by infix -ki-
2. expressed by infix -di-
3. expressed by infix -ti-

pile qappakis I will not eat fish
oshan tanakilcha I will obviously not talk to them

Monday, 26 July 2010

About ambiguity in Kareyku

As you may have noticed in previous posts, the transitions do not cover all the who-to-whom possibilities in Kareyku. While you have transitions which clearly state from 1st person to both 2nd and 3rd person independently, you don't have this from 2nd and 3rd person subjects. Thus -da can either mean you-to-me or you-to-him/her/it, and the same goes for -ta, which can mean either 3rd-to-me, 3rd-to-you or even 3rd-to-3rd (a different 3rd person that is, since you have a reflexive).

Tokida you protect me/he/she/it
Tokita he/she/it protects me/you/him/her/it

So, how can you clearly mark the object or patient in this sentences? Well, Kareyku relies in these cases in context. But even when context is not clear enough you can always use the independent pronouns to mark it. In those cases where you mark the pronoun, the subject will always be understood to be the subject of the transition.

Shin tokida you protect him (you are protecting him)
Odan tokita he protects you (he's protecting you)

Pretty simple. To this, of course many additions can be made. For example the use of prepositions or even evidentials.

ikani odan tokitas.
1st-ADD 2nd protect-4T-EV
He is protecting you with me

I thought this was worth mentioning. Needless to say, the object or patient of the transition can be either omitted or expressed. In those cases where the patient is a pronoun to over express it will have an emphatic sense, otherwise it's just correct.

tokikal ikanu lani
protect-2T-EV 1st-GEN heart
I am known for protecting my heart

Friday, 25 June 2010

The Past Tense

The past tense employs in Kareyku the following transitions for the positive:

Transition 1 is expressed by infix -kan
Transition 2 is expressed by infix -dan
Transition 3 is expressed by infix -tan

So pretty much the same as the present plus the suffix -n. Thus the same happens for the negative, which is:

Transition 1 is expressed by infix -ken
Transition 2 is expressed by infix -den
Transition 3 is expressed by infix -ten

Pretty simple. Note that the past tense ends in -n and so when using an evidential it will take the long version. This is the explanation why you have long and short evidentials, the long ones are mostly used when the past is used, because Kareku doesn't allow nasal + consonant codas. Thus:

tokikansi. I protected (it). With fact evidential.
qappakanni. I ate (it). With hear-say evidential.

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'.