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(3) When the action has been seen or being seen only by the speaker and he is reporting as opposed to when both the listener(s) and speaker are seeing. It is marked by b

when the speaker is reporting what he has seen and the listener is not seeing and by -

when both are seeing the action.

Sometimes the progressive is also expressed by the immediacy aspect marker

e.g. n

¹ k

(pu

)² v

³ ‘Where² are³ you¹ going?³’

There is a contrast among stative verbs in so far as some of them occur in the present tense (formally unmarked) unlike a typical Angami verb while some other stative verbs obligatorily take the durative aspect marker ba in the present tense.

¹ b²	‘I¹ know²’
pu¹ punmyi b²	‘She¹ is angry²’
pu¹ mr b²	‘He¹ is hungry²’
¹ v b²	‘I¹ am well²’

Futher Progressive is expressed by the progressive marker b

followed by the future tense marker.

lsphr b ty	‘Will be studying’
rz b ty	‘Will be playing’

The Perfective aspect is marked for intranstive verbs by -t

. Since past tense is not marked, this would be both present perfective and past perfective.

ct	‘has/had gone to the field’
vrt	‘has/had come’
vt	‘has/had gone’

But when action denoted by such verbs is undone, wat

rather than t

expresses the perfective. But then there is no formal difference between the perfiective and the non-perfective.

Thus,

cwt	‘has gone and come back from the field’
	or
	‘had gone and come back from the field’
	or
	‘went and came back from the field’
vrwt	‘has come and gone’
	or
	‘had come and gone’
	or
	came and went’
vwt	‘has gone and come back’
	or
	went and came back’
trwt	‘(has) rained and stopped’
	or
	‘had rained and stopped’

The perfective marker -t

is not added to transitive verb roots. In the case of transitive verbs, it may be expressed by the Recent past-durative -s

-w

or the valency-role marker followed by the perfective aspect marker.

Thus *h

and *d

khr

where the perfective aspect marker t

is added to transitive verbs h

‘see’ and d

khr

‘kill’ are ungrammatical. The past tense forms of h

‘to see’ for instance would be,

h	‘saw’
hs	‘have/has/had seen’
hwt	‘have/has/had seen’

Recent past durative

-s

denoted that the action identified by the verb has taken place in the recent past and for a short duration.

pu¹ kho² n³ vs⁴	‘He¹ has been⁴ to³ (the) meeting²’
pu¹ kho² nu³ vt⁴	‘He¹ has gone⁴ to³ (the) meeting²’

In the first example, the implication is that the (referent of the) subject may be at the place of the speech act while in the second example, he, necessarily, is not present at the place of the speech act. (In English these two meanings have the same formal realisation).

6.6 Mood

6.6.0 Mood is a grammatical category of the verb which expresses the attitude of the speaker towards what he is saying in terms of the degree or kind of reality, in terms of the obligatoriness, necessity, desirability, contingency etc. of the propositional content of the sentence. The reason why they are considered modals and not adverbs is that sentential adverbs or adverbs which qualify the whole proposition do not follow the verb; but these do. Modals generally co-occur with the tense auxiliary ty

. By the criterion of the deletion of the verb, some are auxiliaries and some suffixes.

An Angami verb may be marked for the following moods:

obligation, necessity, dubitation, desiderative, permissive, optative, hortative, inferential, definitive, ease, exertive, imperative, ability, contrafaction, conditional, contingency, pseudo-condition. This list excludes the indicative mood which is unmarked.


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