a question of terminology

Dear people,

I'm currently busy working on my new grammer of the Denden language,
and I am having a slight problem of terminology, and I was hoping that
you could help me out.

As I have mentioned before, there is a category of verbal affixes in Denden
that is difficult to define. They all occur in the same slot in the
simplex verb, and have complementary distribution, so I'd like to put
them in the same category.

Currently I am considering calling these affixes modal affixes,
aspectivizers or qualifiers. The first term would agree with the usage
in Palmers' Mood and Modality, and is certainly applicable to the
imperative and optative affixes.

Terming these affixes aspectivizers would agree with van Driem's
terminology in his grammar of Dumi. Dumi has among others a _frolicsome_
aspectivizer, which describes 'the sense of hopping about, frisking about,
gamboling about'.

Rutgers, in his excellent grammar of Yamphu, has a category
of qualifiers, with for instance an _exhortative_.

Denden has the following suffixes in this category (with provisional
glosses):
-hau            IMP     imperative
-do             OPT     optative
-men            AFF     affective: the subject of the verb stands in an amatory
   relation to the object; the speaker loves the hearer or the
   hearer loves the speaker, the speaker loves either the subject
   or the object of the verb.
-yara           DSP     despising: same range as <-men> but indicates despising.
-ju             CRT     certainty: the speaker is certain that the sentence is
   true.
-zo     FLT flattering

I hope you all have some ideas :-).

Boudewijn Rempt  | www.xs4all.nl/~bsarempt