Thoughts on Tarsyanian verbs

Hiya,

Because I had nothing better to do, I finally sat down this
evening and thought about fleshing out the Tarśanian verb
morphology a bit more.

Here's what I came up with:

* The basic paradigm is: <stem> + (T)AM + person + S

* Due to sound changes, all stems of verbs end in _-a, -ā_
or _-ańh_ -- In contrast to Ayeri, _-a*_ always belongs to
the stem of the verb. In Ayeri, the corresponding _-ao_ is
dropped when verbs are inflected.

* (T)AM is ([non-]future tense) x (im-)perfective x
indicative/conditional/consequencial/subjunctive -- that'll
be fun to inflect ... Note that I think I'll make the
distinction future/non-future arbitrary so that tense is by
default expressed with temporal adverbs like in English and
German colloquial speech.

* Grammatical persons are 1-3sg/pl, where 3p is divided into
masc/fem

* S means the case the subject of a sentence has, apart from
the verb's valence. The theta-roles are A, P and
E(xperiencer), where E works as a subtype of P since E
also undergoes an action in some way.

DANGER!! UTF-8 used from here on!!! (see at the bottom if
letters appear mangled)


CLASS 1: -a (This is not very different from French, so
nothing exciting here)

Imperfective Indicative Sa
--------------------------

APAŃTA /a"pA~ta/, v agt: to record, to write sth down; <
avantao, "to record"

1sg   ayań  apańt -a
2sg   vańh  apańt -e
3sgm  yańh  apańt -ań
3sgf  hareń apańt -ai
1pl   nań   apańt -as
2pl   pańh  apańt -e
3plm  yatań apańt -a
3plf  treń  apańt -eń

PA /pa/, v agt: to lead; < pitao, "to lead"

1sg   ayań  p -a
2sg   vańh  p -e
3sgm  yańh  p -ań
3sgf  hareń p -ai
1pl   nań   p -as
2pl   pańh  p -e
3plm  yatań p -a
3plf  treń  p -eń


Imperfective Indicative Sp
--------------------------

(I pretend that _apańta_ is a patientive verb here --
actually, since it's an agentive verb, its S must *always*
be an AGT)

APAŃTA

1sg   ayas  apańt -is
2sg   vās   apańt -is
3sgm  yās   apańt -ani
3sgf  harē  apańt -asai
1pl   nas   apańt -asi
2pl   pās   apańt -es
3plm  yatas apańt -is
3plf  tarē  apańt -im


Perfective Indicative Sa
------------------------

APAŃTA

1sg   ayań  apań -Ø  /a."pA~/
2sg   vańh  apań -e  /a."pAJ.J\@/
3sgm  yańh  apań -ań /a.pAJ."J\A~/
3sgf  hareń apań -ai ...
1pl   nań   apań -as
2pl   pańh  apań -e
3plm  yatań apań -Ø
3plf  treń  apań -eń

PA

1sg   ayań  pa· -Ø  /pA?/
2sg   vańh  pa· -e  /pA?@/
3sgm  yańh  pa· -ań /pA?A~/
3sgf  hareń pa· -ai ...
1pl   nań   pa· -as
2pl   pańh  pa· -e
3plm  yatań pa· -Ø
3plf  treń  pa· -eń

The last syllable of perfectives is dropped. If the verb is
monosyllabic, a glottal stop is added to the stem.


Theta-role agreement
--------------------

Sa: -Ø
Sp: -Ø
Se: Sp + _ja_

Note that _-ja_ is related to _-jań_ /jA~/, which is the
dative/benefactive ending of nouns. Sa and Sp are not
specially marked because this is already done with person
agreement as listed in the conjugation paradigms above. I
thought that A and P are the core roles of a verb, even more
than E, so I thought I keep them not specially marked. Or: I
was too lazy to make up a third series of personal endings
;-)

I don't think that there are verbs that have a construct
state as S ... these would be Sc = Sa + _ē_ I figured (_-ē_ <
_-eńh_ /E~:/, the construct case ending of nouns)

I'm still not sure whether to use

  <j>  => /j/
  <dź> => /dz\)/
  <tś> => /ts\)/

or

  <y> => /j/
  <j> => /dz\)/
  <c> => /ts\)/

and for the list

  <š> => /s\/
  <ž> => /z\/
  <á> => /a:/
  <é> => /e:/
  <ñ> => /J/
  ...


Hope you liked it?

Best wishes,
Carsten


--
ń = n-acute  (U+0144)  ś = s-acute  (U+015B)
ź = z-acute  (U+017A)  ñ = n-tilde  (U+00F1)
š = s-caron  (U+0161)  ž = z-caron  (U+017E)
ā = a-macron (U+0101)  ē = e-macron (U+0113)
á = a-acute  (U+00E1)  é = e-acute  (U+00E9)
· = mid-dot  (U+0183)

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