Re: Separate verb conjugation paradigms in conlangs

On Sun, 8 Aug 2004 13:10:09 -0400, Trebor Jung <treborjung@...> wrote:
> Was wondering... If your conlang divides up verbs into separate verb
> conjugational paradigms (as in Latin and Lithuanian), what sort of ways
> do you divide the verbs up? F'rex., is the didvision arbetrary or based
> on
> semantics? If the latter, what semantic criteria do you use?
Kirumb is not the best example of this, its conjugations not being *quite*
comparable to Latin's, but there is a distinct set of ways that stems are
formed from verbal roots, and the conjugation a verb falls into is
strictly dependent on the stem.

To start with, there are five basic categories a root may fall into:

	I.  Root Aorist   (punctual events)
      II.  Root Durative (progressive events)
     III.  Root Perfect  (states; generally mental processes)
      IV.  Reverbals     (from other verb stems: causatives, iteratives,
etc.)
       V.  Denominatives

The classification is generally on semantic grounds, though for example a
verb originally built on a root aorist formation may come to be used for
progressive states as well (and the classification basis of some stems
appears to be entirely arbitrary).  The term "root X" means that out of
the three aspectual stems of the verb, this one is the root, and the
others are derived from it.

The two types of conjugation are athematic and thematic.  (They differ not
by much, though the thematics are generally regular, while the athematics
tend to be more contaminated by the root.)  Athematic durative stems are
rare, with only a few verbs left in the category such as "be" and "eat"
and "say".

However, athematic aorist stems are relatively more common, and exist for
all aorist stems that are formed with -s, namely root duratives, root
perfects, denominatives and some reverbals, such as iteratives and
statives.  Root aorists and causatives are generally thematic.

So for example from the verb "I count" <dólóm> /du:lu:m/, originally a
root perfect, the aorist is <dolsa> /dulsa/, with athematic /-a/ for the
first person, while "I throw out" <hilšóm> /hilSu:m/, originally a root
aorist, has an aorist <hilšoN> /hilSuN/, with thematic /-uN/.



	*Muke!
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