Talk:Siye

Possible Changes

In the causative construction with an imperfective verb, Siye puts the subject of the internal clause in the instrumental case if inanimate and in the genitive (or possessive? not sure which would be more natural) case plus a postpositional noun in the instrumental case if animate:

Le ine eki liyo elelipunama. le-0 i-ne e-ki liyo-0 e-le-li-pu-sum-na-ma 1-NOM 3-GEN 4-INS food-ABS 4-1-eat.IMPFV-SG-CAUS-DIR.UP-IMPFV.POS.REALIS I will feed him (=I will cause him to eat the food)

Could this evolve into an animate instrumental -neki (-meki)? The dative-benefactive -tu and dative-allative -su already exhibit that split between animate and inanimate. The various locative postpositions - emsum, emkim, emtu - could coalesce with the preceding -ne to form elative -nemsum, inessive -nemkim, and illative -nemtu, contrasting with ablative -sum, locative -kem, and allative -su. I've already been thinking of adding an infix -(e)mtu- 'into' to change the intransitive sentence 'um siline emtu ituputuna' 'The man went into the house' into 'um sili itupumtuna' but the possibility of expanding the case system seems more organic, especially since I'm not sure how far I can expand the directional slot. In this were the case, -ne, the genitive suffix, (or maybe the possessive suffix -me) has become -ne- (-me-?), the base for forming oblique stems.

In the causative construction with an perfective verb:

Le liyosu ya liyo ileyopunana. le-0 liyo-su ya i-le-yo-pu-sum-na-na 1-NOM food-ALL 3.ACC 3-1-eat.PFV-SG-CAUS-DIR.UP-PFV.POS.REALIS I fed him (=I caused him to eat the food)