(iii) A participial form of
the verb :
|
There is no separate marker
for the participial form of the verb in this language, rather the
uninflected form of a verb when preposed to a noun has the participial
function and hence verbs having such a function is designated as
participial verb. The participial verb can either be pre or postposed1
to the noun functioning as the nucleus of the NP, as in :
|
lora khela/khela
lora ‘playing child’ (The child who
plays)
lora dawra/dawra lora ‘the running child’, etc.
|
When the participial verb is
postposed to a noun, the possibility of it being misunderstood for a
complete sentence consisting of a noun and a verb exists, as in :
|
lora khela
‘the boy played’
|
is an independent simple
sentence. And the above utterance, if used as a sentence can be
expanded with appropriate modifiers, as in :
|
bal lora joldi khela
‘the good boy played quickly’
|
In isolation, it would not be
possible to distinguish a participial form of the verb from the
predicate of a simple sentence, but the context would indicate in
which function it is used. Further, a participial verb postposed to a
noun head in a NP would need another verb to form a simple sentence,
as in :
|
lora khela
jayse ‘the playing child went’
|
having discussed the
adjectives and their sub-grouping in this language, a brief discussion
of the degrees of comparison follows:
|
The degrees of
comparison:
|
The three
degrees of comparison found to occur with most of the known languages
is also found to occur in this language. These are-Positive,
comparative, and Superlative degrees. The comparative is used for a
comparison between two persons/items or two sets of persons/items
while the rest. The adjective concerned, however, is not inflected to
express different degrees, rather certain particles are
|
|
___________ |
1This
again is Naga influence (of Sreedhar, 1980, 145) Sema Naga: ilimi
nuyakew ‘smiling dame’ (lit, dame smiling).
|
either pre or
postposed to the adjective concerned. The system of comparison
available in this language is discussed below:
|
(i) Positive
degree :
|
Any sentence
with a simple, qualitative adjective, i.e., without pre or postposing
to the adjective, is in the positive degree, and forms the basis of
comparison, for instance:
|
chitra doniya
suali ‘Chitra is a beautiful girl’
heytu gor da or
‘that house is big’
moy citrak bal lage ‘I like Chitra’, etc.
|
(ii) Comparative
degree :
|
The comparative
degree is formed out of a sentence in the positive degree. The
mechanism involved is to postpose the comparative particle kori to the
noun to which something else is compared. Usually quality of only one
noun is compared, with the same quality of another noun/pronoun. It
is, however, possible to compare the qualities of two or more noun/pronouns
with
that of two or more nouns/pronouns, eg.-
|
(a) Citra ua
kori doniya suali
‘Chitra is more beautiful that Usha’
|
(b) heytu gor
itu gor kori daor
‘that house is bigger than this house’
|
(c) moy citrak ua
kori bal lage
‘I like Chitra more than Usha’
|
(d) moy citrak ua
 ru aku
kori bal lage
‘I like Chitra more than Usha and Shaku’
|
In the
illustrative examples of (a&b)given above, the noun compared is part
of the predicate and the noun to which it is compared is the subject,
whereas in (c & d) both of them form part of the predicate. When both
the nouns involved in the comparison form part of the predicate, the
noun/nouns to which something else is compared will have the
accusative case marker and would be the NP2 and
the noun/pronoun compared would be without any case marker and would
be the NP3. The particle of comparison would be
postposed to the NP3, but preposed to the
qualitative adjective and the NP2 is invariably
preposed to NP3.
|
(iii) Superlative
degree:
|
Whereas the
comparative degree is used to compare the qualities of two
nouns/pronouns or two sets of nouns/pronouns, the superlative degree
is used to compare one noun/pronoun with the rest.
|
