Re: Participles in Natlangs and in Conlangs

Kash is poor in participles. The base form of verbs can be used
attributively--

(past/perfect "participle")
indemi sisa (mother-my love) my beloved mother
andusok teca (result desire) a/the desired result/outcome
(for negative un-, prefix tra-)

But no present or future forms; you have to use finite forms:
anala re (i)nawus/(i)lali (children REL (they)swim/sing) 'the
swimming/singing children'

Gerunds: very formal -(a)le: nawusale/lalile anali 'the childrens'
swimming/singing...'; or a nominalization+ni (if it exists)-- andali/ni
anala, or most common/colloquial, base+ni: lali/ni anala.

Gerund+DO is another matter: sosir atotiñi, me yarumbarak 'hearing his
report made me angry' = anju masorir atotiñi, maçumarak "when I heard his
report I got angry'.

Futures:
"I have a report to write (=that must be written)" yale atotin re macayi
(ma-w)uris (there-is report REL I-must (I-)write)

"Morituri te salutamus" mila re poro-poro mihorem, te vele supaka
(we REL going-to/redup. we-die, you-DAT. give obeisance)

Probably Charlie will post some complex examples of this sort of thing in
his 1200 sentence project..........

There are, however, potential (able to) forms with prefix po- (related to
pole 'be able'); generally po+intrans.verb = 'able to...', po+trans.vb. =
'able to be ...ed' (actually that's pretty English-y, come to think of it
;-(  ), and some forms have specific or idiosyncratic meanings:

poharan 'able to walk' refers only to young children, as - usually_ does
poçindi 'able to speak'.

But poharan with a location means "able to be walked (to), within walking
distance", and an adult might exclaim trapoçindi mam "I was speechless!'

But trapoharan/trapoçindi _could_ refer to an adult who has never been able
to walk/speak due to congenital problems; otherwise, one would have to use
the aux. verb--
ta yapole (ya)haran/çindi 'he can't walk/speak' (due to some temporary
problem/injury).

And (tra)ponolit of humans means '(il)literate, (un)able to read', of
written work, '(il)legible'

Reply