| future and non-proximal future on the
other. There is no copula verb. The existential verb has three variants
‘da’, ‘du’ and ‘do’ and the selection is made on the basis of the
posture of the subject (i.e., whether in standing posture, or sitting
posture or lying posture). The negative immediately precedes the tense
in the formation of finite verbs. Transitive are not distinguished
from intransitives through separate markers. In other words, transitives
are inherent and not derived. The predicate is not marked for gender,
number and person (to agree with the subject). There is a category
of verbs that are used as adjectives as well. |
| Causative |
Those verbs which provide
the case frame for a causer and cause are called causative verbs.
In such constructions the agent manifested as the subject will be
the causer of the action and the cause will be the performer of the
action. There are verbs like - me
‘kill’ which have causative interpretation, though
the causative is not indicated at the morphological level. They are
lexical causatives and are non-productive. |
| Morphologically regular and productive
form of causatives are formed by adding ‘kene’
to the verb root. Since there are no instances of the same form or
related item used in a similar semantic range, a detailed analysis
of this causative marker was not possible in this study. A sample
is listed below :
|
harkene
|
‘make to run’
|
gokene
|
‘make to fly’
|
mekene
|
‘make to kill’
|
imi ikene
|
‘make to sleep’
|
|
|
| In the case of - imi ‘sleep’, it is noticed
that the causative marker ‘kene’
is added to the duplicated first syllable and as a result of sandhi,
the alveolar nasal undergoes assimilation. |
|
It is also possible to express the
causative in such a way that the notion of the action performed
by the causer (i.e., the agent who causes to initiate the action)
and causee (i.e., the agent who performs the action) could be explicitly
represented as exemplified below. In such constructions causee is
manifested through the instrumental case sign and causative suffix
‘ko’ is added to the verb.
|
o
m
lo aki mi
mekoto
|
I he inst.
dog acc.
search-cau-p.t.
|
|
‘I made him search
the dog’
|
|
|
|
I he inst. I-gen.
pig acc. kill-cau-p.t.
|
|
‘I made him kill
my pig’
|
|
|
|
ka
alyi mi mekoto
