PolyD Verbs

The list is not very active, so ....

The possible components of a fully inflected trivalent verb and the
order they appear is:

	LA-Align-A3-PA/RT-SA-Root-Deriv-Mood-HA-Voice

where

HA =	Higher Argument	- the person higher on the person hierarchy
LA =	Lower Argument	- the person lower on the person hierarchy
A3 =	Argument 3	- the 3rd argument
Align =	Alignment	- direct, inverse, or reciprocal
Voice =	Voice		- active, passive, or reflexive
Deriv =	Derivationals
Mood =	Mood
PA/RT =	Primary Aspect/Relative Tense
SA =	Secondary Aspect

The derivationals (what's the correct term?) are optional infixes
(except that they sometimes appear as suffixes) which modify the
root and are lexical but productive. The causative and perceptive
add arguments to the verb, so they can only be used to provide a
"missing" argument. The reflexocausative changes the semantics of
the higher argument.

The moods are indicative, imperative, hypothetical, and
contrafactual; mood is the only component (besides the root) which
is both required and has no zero realizations.

The primary aspects are perfective, imperfective, retrospective,
and prospective. The relative tenses are present, past, and future.
The absolute tenses are not part of the verb. Perfective aspect is
not marked and applies only to P-Class verbs. Imperfective aspect
is not marked on I-Class verbs. Relative present tense isn't
marked; these forms may also be used for relative past tense when
the context is absolute present.

The secondary aspects are habitual, iterative, continuative, and
the process phases: inceptive, pausative, resumptive, and
cessative. Some combinations are possible.

Persons are 1st (singular, exclusive plural, and inclusive plural),
2nd (singular and plural), 3rd (singular and plural), and
unspecified; there are also actants which coreference argument of
the main verb and some which make the verb into a syntactical
adjective.

The person hierarchy is

	2nd person > 1st person > 3rd person

When the alignment is direct, the higher argument acts like a
subject, the lower argument like an indirect (or primary) object,
and the 3rd argument like a direct (or secondary) object. That is,
the higher argument has the most agent-like role. Inverse alignment
swaps the roles of the higher and lower arguments, so that the
lower argument has the most agent-like role.

Passive or reflexive voice preempts lower argument and alignment.
Active voice is unmarked.

Examples:

kuhlamemi
[ku'K:a:.mE.mi]
 k-  u- h-lam -e  -mi
1S-Inv-3S-give-Ind-2P
"I gave you (plur) it."

koresumasten
[kO.XE.su'mas.tEn]
 k-ore- su-mat-s -u  -n
1S-Rcp-Ret-see-RC-Ctf-2S
"We would have looked at each other"

Inv	Inverse
Ind	Indicative
Rcp	Reciprocal
RC	Reflexocausative
Ctf	Contrafactual

I'm not completely satisfied with this. For one thing, I'm not sure
about how to justify the morpheme order "historically".

Comments or questions?

Jeff

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