Khulls verbs
Khulls verbs are broadly similar to Poswa's.
Structure of verbs
Strucuture of verbal stems
Most verbs end in vowels. This is because in the Tapilula language, all words ended in vowels and verbs were formed by moving the stress to the final syllable. In the Gold language, some unstressed vowels were dropped, but since all verb roots were stressed on their final syllable, no verb would ever come to end in a consonant. Khulls, however, has exceptions to this, because some verbs have come to end in consonants. These are of two types:
- Verbs that formerly ended in a stressed schwa vowel /ə/. In Khulls, stress drifted away from the schwa early on, and later the schwa was dropped entirely, usually leaving behind a residue of labialization on the preceding consonant. An example of this is ḳʷahʷ "to sleep in a bed".
- Verbs that formerly ended in a stressed syllabic consonant, which was considered a vowel at the time. Khulls does not consider these to be vowels and they cannot carry stress except in a word containing no vowels. This category contains only words ending with nasals, as the other syllabic consonants did not exist in the Gold language.
Tense and person markers
The verbal endings are always unstressed and the stress migrates to the last syllable of the stem. The gender marker is inserted before the vowel.
| person | past | pres | fut | hab | imp1 | imp2 | other | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | — | ō | ūm | o | ūṅṭ | |||
| 2nd | ĕ | ē | ṁ | i | ṅṭ | |||
| 3rd | ī | ā | ōm | a | ōṅṭ | |||
Use of gender markers
Khulls retains the use of the otherwise mostly obsolete consonantal gender markers inherited from the Gold language. For example, with the verb kʷî "to dream", one can say
- Šŭpe kʷînī.
- Suphoi (a girl's name) dreamt.
- Baṭà kʷîrī.
- Batak (a boy's name) dreamt.
Use of gender markers with verb stems ending in consonants
They seomtimes mingle with the consonants at the end of verbs, with each consonant affecting the other.
