Development of Silindion verbal inflection

 As I have shown before many times, in Silindion there
are two main endings for the 3rd person singular [in
the present tense], namely, -n and -r.

Example:

   tek¨¦n  "he praises X"
   an¨¢r   "he promises"
   mir    "he falls"
   nen    "he gives X"

The main difference between them is often that -n is
for transitive verbs (not universal however) and -r is
for intransitive verbs (not universal as well).

What I'm beginning to understand is that, in some time
in Silindion's past it must have had a SPLIT
inflection system of some sort. This can account for
the less than straightforward distribution of -r and
-n. (I'm not sure exactly how, but it's a start of a
theory).

Anyway, beyond this assumption of an ancient split
system, I also think that the basic divisions in
inflection for Silinestic (Silindion's immediate
predecessor) must have been the following:

predicate with two arguments:
  *tekk-Vm       nistad       lawando-m
   praise-3A/3P  king[AGENT]  hunter-[PATIENT]
 "the king praises the hunter"

predicate with one argument:
  *an-Vr       nistad         gelet¨¥-di
   promise-3S  king[SUBJECT]  gold-[GENITIVE]
  "The king promises gold"

[this is intransitive, really "makes a promise of"]

predicate with no arguments:
   tekkn-V                     lawando-di
   praise.stative-[empty 3s]   hunter-[GENITIVE]
   "The hunter is being praised"
   "There is praising of the hunter"

(the verb here is a n-stative derivative of the root
TEKK "praise". N-statives as derivatives are very
archaic, and mostly have become grammaticalised as
passive 3rd singular presents in Silindion. One
n-stative which is still derivational is   <ser-n- "to
be ready"> as opposed to <ser- "to prepare">)

So, this means that the suffixes -Vm and -Vr may be
compound suffixes,  -V-m and -V-r, with -V being an
empty 3rd singular, -m relating that 3rd singular to
an object, -r relating it to a subject. Found by
itself, the verb remains neutral as to argument count.


Is this at all plausible?

 -Elliott


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