|
III
person personal pronouns do not have any oblique forms their occurrence
is on par with the nouns, as in : |
| 11 |
(a) |
pano
aki sie |
`he built the house’ |
| |
(b) |
ak
 ye
pano sie |
`the
house was built by him’ |
| 12
|
(a) |
ino li heqhiwà |
`I beat her’ |
| |
|
(b)liye
into heqhiwà |
`she
was beaten by me’ etc. |
|
|
|
The
general and universal constraints in the use of the passive voice found
with all other languages is also found with the Sema. The first major
restraint is that a verb in the intrasitive construction can occur only
in the active. Secondly even when a verb is in the transitive, a transformation
from the active to passive is not possible if the verb is in the imperative
mood. Any sentence having a verb, in moods other than the imperative,
or in any aspect or in any tense could be transformed from the active
to passive provided the verb is in the transitive. A few examples would
illustrate this point. |
| 13 |
(a) |
pano
asi cúlunanì |
`he
can eat meat’ |
| |
(b) |
asiye
pano cúlunanì |
`the meat can be eaten by him’ |
|
14 |
(a)
|
pano
asi cúluwe |
`he
could eat meat’ |
| |
(b) |
asiye
pano cúlue |
`the meat could be eaten by him’ |
|
15 |
(a)
|
pano
asi cúluwi |
`he
is likely to eat the meat’ |
| |
(b) |
asiye
pano cúluwi |
`the meat is likely to be eaten by him’ |
|
|
| Aspects
: |
| (a)
Progressive : |
| 16 |
(a) |
pano
asi cúanì |
`he
is eating meat’ |
| |
(b)
|
asiye
pano cúanì |
`the meat is being eaten by him’ |
|
17 |
(a)
|
pano
asi cúay |
`he
was eating the meat’ |
| |
(b) |
asiye
pano cúay |
`the
meat was being eaten by him’ |
|
18 |
(a) |
pano asi cúananì |
`he
will be eating the meat’ |
| |
(b) |
asiye
pano cúananì |
`the
meat will be eaten by him’ |
|
|
| Habitual
: |
| 19
|
(a) |
pa asi cúcey |
`he
used to eat meat’ |
| |
|
asiye pano cúcey |
`meat
used to be eaten by him’ |
| 20 |
(a)
|
pa
asi cúcenì |
`he
eats meat’ |
| |
|
asiye pano cúcenì |
`meat
is eaten by him’ |
|
|
|
In
brief it may be stated that the transformation of a sentence from active
to the passive is made basically by a change in the word order of the
logical subject and the logical object with the continuing to take the
nominative marker. In addition whilest int he passive the logical object
of an active sentence, would take either the focus marker or the definite
particle. Further when the first or second person personal pronoun is
the object of an active sentence, they have the clitic form which is prefixed
to the verb, whilest in the passive, they take the full form. The verb
shows the same shape in both types of sentences. The universal restraints
in the use of the passive is applicable also to the Sema language. |
| 3.3.5
The Grammatical Categories of the Verb |
|
All
the known languages have some device or the other to signal the time and
the duration of an action and also the attitude of a speaker towards that
action etc. These are usually signalled by the verb through certain inflectional
devices and/or through analytical devices. These devices are usually treated
under the grammatical categories of the verb. The Sema language also makes
use of certain devices to indicate a few grammatical categories of a verb.
The grammatical categories available in Sema are : tense, aspect and mood.
Beginning with the tense, the following sections would discuss the occurrence
of the different grammatical categories in Sema. |
| 3.3.5.1.
Tense |
|
Time
is a universal non-linguistic concept with three divisions, viz., past,
present and future. When the verbs in any language, however, make use
of certain devices so as to signal a correspondence with the universal
concept of time, it is known as the grammatical category of tense. Sema
also has the grammatical category of tense, which like any other language
intersects with the duration of an action, known as the grammatical category
of aspect (progressive). If the intersection of the time element with
the aspect is |
