Tapilula verbs

Tapilula has an inventory of private verbs: verbs whose meaning is dependent entirely on the noun class of the agent and patient of the verb.

Private verbs

All private verbs consist of a single syllable, always on the high tone (spelled `).

Noun classes for agents

Tapilula had an animacy hierarchy, such that only animate nouns could be the agent of any verb. Intransitive verbs are not considered to distinguish agent and patient in this language. Note also that there was no case marking in Tapilula; this was innovated independently in the daughter languages, and of those, only the genitive comes from the same morpheme in both Andanese and Gold — the infix -ə̀h-.

Parent noun class I: Humans and other sapient beings

Humans are at the top of the animacy hierarchy in Tapilula and in all of its descendants, although most of the descendants divide humans into higher and lower forms. Some animals are also included in this class, and were included from the very beginning of the development of the system.

The Human superclass is subdivided by gender and age, as well as for species in the case of the non-humans who are grouped with them as fellow sapients. The superclass includes:

1. Adult female (Andanese hi-)
2. Adult male (tə-)
3. Young female, maiden (Andanese ni-)
4. Children, babies; birds; fish; buildings occupied by humans
5. Epicene; pregnant women (pu-)
6. Crustaceans (pe-)

Note that birds, fish, and children are all in the same category, marked by nu-. This is considered to be the categorical marker of the human parent class, but among humans, children are the only group who are not marked with an additional gender marker which supplants the species marker nu-. Buildings are also included, but can only appear as agents when serving metonymically for humans who occupy them.

The prefixes for some animals, such as crustaceans, are included here for completion's sake but are actually only used when padded with the "fish" prefix nu-, which is used because crustaceans are found near fish.

Parent noun class II: Land animals

Large land animals that do not have gender distinctions are carried here. Since this is a habitat-based classification, seabirds such as penguins are not included, and neither are any other birds.

1. Snakes (ŋe-)
2. Frogs and amphibians (hə-)
3. Rabbits (tə-)
4. Mice and rodents (la-)
5. Flying insects (ka-)
6. Worms (fi-)
7. All other large land animals (Andanese la-; possibly composite)

Noun classes for patients

All agents can also be patients, so the numbering of the noun classes for patients starts where the agents left off.

Parent noun class III: Inalienable possessions

Inalienable possessions can be elevated to full animate status by various means.

1. Unorganized nouns (no classifier prefix)
2. Edible body parts (i-)
3. Inedible body parts (mi-)
4. Blood, bodily humors (do-)

Parent noun class IV(?): Manmade objects

1. Handheld objects (yo-)
2. Claws and sharp objects (nə-)
3. Arrows and similar weapons (tu-)

Parent noun class V(?): Plants

1. Trees (ka-)
2. Trees (hi-)
3. Succulent fruit (tu-)
4. Grass; small plants (du-)
5. Other fruits (ŋu-)

The Andanese ya- noun class, which is highly composite, is secondary and thus not represented here. It corresponds mostly to originally disyllabic full words in which the original two vowels were /i/ and /a/. For example, Tapilula ḳèga became Late Andanese ya-, no longer meaningful as a standalone word.

Newly discovered trees are placed into the ka- group regardless of their physical appearance.

Parent noun class VI: Mass nouns

1. Water; weather (pi-)

Parent noun class VII: Invincible passives

Unlike all other nouns, even animates, members of this class cannot be either an agent or a patient of any verb. That is, when one sees the sun in the sky, the sun is not affected by this, and therefore Tapilula can only use an intransitive verb.

1. Celestial objects (fu-)