Re: Auxiliary verbs

That's interesting, Nik. I thought that perhaps I'd share what I did
to disambiguate the two meanings in Arithide (pronounced, rather
unfortunately, similar to the deposed Haitian president).

In Arithide, which is agglutinative when it comes to verb conjugation,
the two types of negation are both done with the same suffix, "Av"
(variant "Af"), where A is an underspecified vowel that mutates
between [a], [o], [e], [@] and the null vowel based on the phonetic
environment. This suffix can either be attached at the end of the verb
conjugation, or immediately after the verb root:

(ai) vagusov
      vag-u-s-Av
      go-SUBV-DESD-NEGA
      I/you/he/she/it/we/they do not want to go

(aii) vagavus (dialectal variant: avevagus)
       vag-Av-u-s (Av-e-vag-u-s)
       go-NEGA-SUBV-DESD (NEGA-epen-go-SUBV-DESD)
       I/you/he/she/it/we/they want not to go

(bi) ersusov
      ers-u-s-Av
      do not want to write

(bii) ersevus (dialectal: afersus or aversus)
       ers-Av-u-s
       want not to write

Which is not very dissimilar from Nik's method, only that in this case
the auxiliary is the same word and also implies that the affirmative
and negative versions of a verb (i.e. to go vs. to not go) are
separate lexemes (did i use the term correctly?).

If I'm not mistaken, Korean has the same two-way distinction, only the
exact form eludes me right now.

On 5/13/06, Nik Taylor <yonjuuni@...> wrote:
> This thread has helped me solve a problem I've had for a while with
> Kasshian (formerly known as Uatakassi - still it's *native* name, though
> spelled Watakasshi in my new romanization)
>
> Auxiliaries attach to their verb as affixes, or, more properly,
> incorporate the main verb as a prefix.  Anyways, the word for "not" is
> an independent particle, _fel_, following the inflected verb.  Now, the
> problem that arises is that, since the verb and the auxiliary are a
> single unit, and _fel_ is an independent particle, it must follow,
> whichever part is intended to be negated.  So, I wasn't sure how to
> distinguish, e.g., "I don't want to go" vs. "I want to not go".
>
> Oops, bad example.  There are distinct (but related) verbs for "want to"
> and "want to not".  Let's go with "afraid to", then.  It would be
> impossible to distinguish "I am not afraid to go" and "I am afraid to
> not go"
>
> I've figured it out now.  The normal construction is interpreted as
> negating the auxiliary.
>
> Zabakaisoç fel
> Zaba-kais-u-ç           fel
> Go  -fear-I-NonPunctual not
> I am not afraid to go
>
> To negate the verb itself, one uses an additional auxiliary, _das_,
> which historically is derived from a verb meaning "to lack" (related to
> the modern verb _dakas_ "to ignore"), hence:
>
> Zabadaskaisoç
> Zaba-das-kais-u-ç
> Go  -not-fear-I-NonPunctual
> I am afraid to not go
>
> Historically "I am afraid to lack going"
>
> Das is only used with other auxiliaries.  To say simply "I do not go/I
> am not going", one says
> Zabauç fel
> Zaba-u-ç          fel
> Go  -I-NonPuntual Not
>
> *Zabadasoç would be ungrammatical
>