Talk:Siye Verbal Morphology

Converbals

-teku- + NEG 'to fear doing' Aversive (AVE)

-teku- governs negative polarity. Negation of the aversive converbal is standard negation.

siye melo eleyoputekutumu.

I fear to listen to these words.

-yosaku- + IRLS (* + RLS)

-yosaku- governs irrealis mood, even though its sense is realis, because it is derived from the dubitative (DUB) -yosa- + IRLS.

Participle Structure

Siye participles are derived from Siye verbs. The verb is stripped of its pronominal prefixes and therefore the person suffix. Roots which supplete according to aspect still do so. There are in fact more suppletive roots for participles than finite verbs, since the initial stress and the lack of any pronominal prefixes preserved weak verb-initial roots. The characteristic suffix of the participle is the nominalizer. There are three nominalizing suffixes -yam, -ki, -kim, which convert the participle to a nominal stem which can take number and case suffixes. -yam creates active, mostly animate nouns; these are usually imperfective unless the converbal suffix requires perfective. -ki creates passive, mostly inanimate nouns; counter-intuitively, it also creates instrumental nouns. In general, the participles with perfective aspect have a passive meaning, while those with imperfective aspect have instrumental meaning. -kim creates inanimate place names.

1. Root

2. Causative

3. Converbal

4. Directional

5. Aspect

6. Mode

7. Nominalizer

8. Grammatical Number

9. Case