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Laceyiami tėðaminia: daniende paijysa
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Present tense verbs and introducing nouns
This public article was written by [Deactivated User], and last updated on 17 Aug 2016, 16:51.

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Menu 1. Present tense verbs - Tanimi smārjāmai 2. Voices - Bāṇakai 3. Nouns and cases - Hjyðai deminai ta
[edit] [top]Present tense verbs - Tanimi smārjāmai

Jayṇa meitę liśā Laceyiami tėðaminei daniende paijysað - welcome to the second lesson of our  Laceyiam course! This is going to be another pretty long one, but it's one with sheer importance as we'll learn the basics of the two fundamental parts of speech when it comes to meaning: verbs and nouns.

Verbs, in Laceyiam, are a really complex part of speech because they can be inflected in many different ways and can be further modified by optional affixes (these mostly syntactically and pragmatically useful).

We'll begin by seeing the simple present tense (tanima or tanimāvyāṣa), a tense we already began to see last time out with the verb haiske (to be). Let's see its conjugation again one more time, but let's keep in mind it is an irregular verb which uses different stems, as the infinitive form haiske tells us once again:

EnglishLaceyiam
I am
You (singular) arejīð
He/she/it isjar
We arejńām
You (plural) arejńāð
They arejhis


The endings of these forms are usually considered to be -ū, -ð, -r, -ām, -āð, and -s. The regular endings of the present tense are mostly like these, being -(ʲ)u*, -við, -r, -sām, -kām, -thās.
The citation forms always end in either -ke or, for a small part of verbs, -ge. That form, like in English, is the infinitive.

Before looking at verbs, it helps to know that Laceyiam has four main conjugations: a conjugation is determined by the vowel that a verb takes between the root and the ending.
The first conjugation uses a (for a few verbs ai), the second one uses e, the third y and the fourth one has no thematic vowel. The endings are basically the same in all conjugations, but sometimes they interact differently with the stem of the verb, especially fourth conjugation ones.

Let's see our second verb, keypake, which means 'to go (generic or by foot)':
EnglishLaceyiam
I gokeypu
You (singular) gokeypavið
He/she/it goeskeypar
We gokeypasām
You (plural) gokeypakām
They gokeypathās
(Adjectival form)keypęe
(Adverbial form)keypamāṇi


We have added two more rows: each verb has an adjectival and an adverbial form, which have various uses we'll see later on (haiske has them too: jalięe and jaliemāṇi).

Perhaps you noticed I put an asterisk after listing the first person singular ending as -(ʲ)u. This is because this ending actually changes between the conjugations. In the first conjugation, it is -(ʲ)u; in the second it is -ė-yu; in the third it is and in the fourth it is -(ʲ)u again. That (ʲ) appears in the fourth conjugation after a vowel and in both the first and the fourth after a single consonant that is one of -l, -r, -m, -v, -c or -ch.

[edit] [top]Voices - Bāṇakai

The main thing that has to be considered when speaking Laceyiam is verbal voice (bāṇaka). Unlike English, which just has active and passive voice, Laceyiam has five different voices and their use is quite different from English, especially in the consequences they have on syntax and pragmatics.
The default voice, the one that uses the terminations we've already seen, is the Patientive or Patient-trigger voice (tairabessi bāṇaka) which corresponds to the English passive.
Let's take a transitive verb and see this difference; we'll use lehake, 'to eat'.
EnglishLaceyiam
I am eatenlehu
You (singular) are eatenlehavið
He/she/it is eatenlehar
We are eatenlehasām
You (plural) are eatenlehakām
They are eatenlehathās
(Adjectival form)lehęe
(Adverbial form)lehamāṇi


Obviously the use of verbs depends on the other components of the sentence, but how do we translate the English active voice? Laceyiam uses the Agentive or Agent-trigger voice (tairenei bāṇaka), which only exists for transitive verbs (that's the opposite of what English does, where only transitive verbs have a passive voice).
This voice adds -ṭ to forms ending in a vowel, -tų for those ending in a consonant; a preceding -m becomes -ṃ. Note that there is no distinct attributive form!
Patient-triggerAgent-trigger
-(ʲ)u/-ėyu/-ȳ-(ʲ)uṭ/-ėyuṭ/-ȳṭ
-við-viðtų
-r-rtų
-sām-sāṃtų
-kām-kāṃtų
-thās-thāstų
-ęe-ęe


Adverbial forms do not exist in agent-trigger voice.
Let's see now the agent-trigger present-tense of lehake:
EnglishLaceyiam
I eatlehuṭ
You (singular) eatlehaviðtų
He/she/it eatslehartų
We eatlehasāṃtų
You (plural) eatlehakāṃtų
They eatlehathāstų
(Adjectival form)lehęe


[edit] [top]Nouns and cases - Hjyðai deminai ta

We've seen verbs and their voices, now it's time to see how these voices actually work with nouns. Laceyiam is a highly inflected language when it comes to nouns, with two numbers, just like English - singular (paṃlinað) and plural (paṃdaniøgur) - and eleven cases.
Three of these cases are those "core" ones which are strictly required by verbs: direct (klīṣādemin), ergative (tairdemin) and accusative (mėniādemin).

Direct case - the citation form of nouns - is the one the verb's voice agrees with, and marks the patient in patient-trigger verbs and the agent in agent-trigger ones. The opposite role is covered by the other cases: the ergative marks the agent in patient-trigger verbs while the accusative marks the patient in agent-trigger verbs.

Laceyiam nouns are inflected in many different patterns, mostly depending on their ending (but sometimes it's more due to historical developments): there are nine declensions plus some other "sub-declensions". The one we'll start to see now is the first one, which is also the most common: nouns inflected with this pattern end in one of -a, -ā, -ë, -ia, -iā, -ie, -iė, or -au.
Let's use the noun emīla, meaning 'tiger', as an example for our first three cases:
CaseSingularPlural
Directemīlaemīlai
Ergativeemīlassemīlaiss
Accusativeemīlauemīlariau


How to these cases work? Let's describe a situation where we have an emīla - a tiger - which eats a hātta - a monkey.
The most unmarked possibility will use the patient-trigger voice, so that the sentence will translate English "the monkey is eaten by a tiger". When it comes to word order, we've already seen that Laceyiam keeps its verbs at the end; for other elements, usually the topic is stated before the comment and, while there is a distinct topic marker in the language, it won't be used in this kind of sentence. The topic is therefore the direct case element, the one the verb agrees with. Our sentence will then be: hātta emīlass lehar.

If we use the agent-trigger voice, translating English "the tiger eats a monkey", we need to change the order of the two nouns (as now the topic is the tiger) and put the verb in the right voice: emīla hāttau lehartų.

The main difference between these two sentences is the topic: the focus of the first sentence is the monkey, while in the second one it's the tiger. The most neutral interpretation of these sentences, also, puts the non-topic argument as indefinite (a monkey vs. the monkey). (in)Definiteness and topicalization are tightly related parts of Laceyiam grammar we'll see more in detail in the next lessons.

That's all for now, and we've covered some extremely important parts of Laceyiam grammar, putting the bases for what's to come. Next time out we'll expand on verbs and we'll learn how to translate English adjectives as well as numbers and basic concepts like 'there is'. Sārtamvilkā!
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