# of possible verb declensions (was gotten, boughten)

<<This is why I hate English.  5,104 different possible constructions of the
same verb.>>
Assuming you made up that number (there can't be THAT many), I'm starting to
wonder what number of verb forms there ARE for any English verb. Has anyone
actually studied this? What is the average number of possible verb forms in
a said conlang? Mine (elanagauo) is the following:

etatuo / infinitive, to eat, eating

PRESENT
totatu* / I eat
sotatu / you eat
kotatu / he/she/it eats
dotatua/ we eat
shotatua / you pl. eat
gotatua / they eat

*The problem with including each of these as a separate verb form
is that each one is really just the pronoun particle (to, so, ko, etc.) plus
the stem (tatu = pres. sing., tatua = pres. pl.). If you separate the
pronoun-particle from the verb, the verb reverts to infinitive. Example:
totatu bia biatatuo (or totatu biatatuo, the extra bia can be ommited)
= to etatuo bia biatatuo etogu
  1st S. pro-n part. - INF - A/Ps - PNoun AV
I eat food.

INF = infinitive; A/Ps = agent/patient separator; PNoun = patient noun,
derived from verb (etatuo to eat, ebiatatuo food); AV auxiliary verb in
object phrase shows tense and number of subject

I'm kinda rambling here, but I never posted my verb system before. Or any
for that matter, I'm probably over-elaborating.

PAST
totati / I ate
sotati / you ate
etc.
dotatia / we ate
etc.

FUTURE
satotatuo / I ate
sasotatuo / you ate
etc., does not change for plural

Elanagauo uses the three basic tenses always, with adverb/adjective
modifiers for moods and the perfect tenses. So, if I counted correctly,
there are 19 verb forms including the infinitive and excluding derived noun
and modifying forms. If you don't count pronoun infixes as separate verb
forms, then there are 6 verb forms in elanagauo: e-uo, -u, -ua, -i, -ia,
sa-uo

I hope no one kills me for going into too much detail on my tangent, but I
hate fun working this out along the way.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jake
AIM: alwaysawake247
MSN Messenger: alwaysawake247@hotmail.com

(btw, this is the same Jake who used to have "Patient is the Procrastinaror"
at the bottom, I just changed my sig file.)



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