Re: Lindiga and naturalism

2008/5/19 Herman Miller <hmiller@...>:
> Philip Newton wrote:
>>
>> On Sat, May 17, 2008, Herman Miller <hmiller@...> wrote:
>>>
>>> Are there languages without irregular verbs? Lindiga verbs are
>>> pretty much regular so far.
>>
>> I take it you're only looking for natlangs?
>>
>> There are certainly languages with very few irregular verbs -- for
>> example, I think Japanese only has a handful (suru "do" and kuru
>> "come" are the obvious ones, and some forms of aru "be, exist" and
>> iku "go").
>>
>> Cheers,
>
> I think Swahili also has very few irregular verbs. "Come" and "go"
> seem to be popular verbs to have irregular forms. Lindiga divides
> up the motion verbs somewhat differently, but it might make sense
> for words like "depart" or "arrive" to be irregular.
>
Specifically Swahili has the following "truly" irregular verbs:

kuwa - to be, and the derived verbs:
kuwa na - to have
kuwapo - to be located

And then there are a few verbs with monosyllabic roots:

kupa - to give
kufa - to die
kula - to eat
kunywa - to drink
kunya - to excrete
kucha - to dawn
kuchwa - to set, of the sun

These have a slightly different conjugation (specifically, the prefix
"ku-" is not dropped in certain tenses)

Then there are the verbs:

kwisha - to end
kwenda - to go

which, although their verb stems are disyllabic, sometimes(?) follow
the conjugation of verbs with monosyllabic stems (retaining the kw-).

A good resource is <http://mwanasimba.online.fr/E_TABLE.htm>

René