Talk:Poswa verbs

NOTE TO SELF

Do person markers match after possessed verbs?

e.g. should "My boyfriend dumped me." be

Vupio nimpfebel. ?

or

Vupio nimpfebi. ?

trgulasization of -m

consider regulatizing -m as -mba, so that certain compound inflectosn would be more regular.Poswob Rare (talk) 05:48, 6 May 2017 (PDT)

Proximal and distal verbs

Poswa has an unusual method of marking person on its transitive verbs. Both the agent and the patient of an action are marked on the verbal suffix, which usually has two syllables. However, the method of marking the agent differs from the method of marking the patient.

For the agent of an action, all three persons are marked, although there is no marking for number, gender, or animacy. For the patient, on the other hand, there are no person markers; instead there is a contrast between proximal and distal patients.

NOTE, PROBABLY CANCEL ALL OF THIS.

Proximal patients account for most verbs. If a verb has no explicit patient, the patient is assumed to be the entity nearest the speaker. That is, for a verb with a first-person agent, the patient is the second person (the listener); if the agent is second person (the listener), the agent is the first person (the speaker). If the agent is third person, the patient is again the first person.

Proximal and distal patients are distinguished by changing the intervocalic consonant in the verbal suffix. For proximal patients, which account for nearly all verbs, the consonant is -b- unless affected by a sandhi rule. For distal patients, it is usually -f-. Thus one can say:

Pwebi!

I found you!

Since there are no nouns in the sentence, the final -i on the verb indicates a first person agent and the -b- indicates a proximal patient. Because the agent is the speaker (first person), the patient is the listener (second person). To indicate a different patient, one could say

Pwefi!

I found it!

However, when a verb has an explicitly mentioned patient, which by definition indicates that it is third person, the verb uses -b- again because it is referring to the most recently mentioned object, and is therefore "proximal" after all:

Pešiopi pwebi!

I found my book!

If a speaker were to use the distal form of the verb here, it would imply the presence of a second object, which the listener must understand from context. This omitted word need not be in the accusative case.

(Bwišub) pešiopi pwefi!

(Using my flashlight) I found my book!