wya
occurs when the state of the action referred to by the verb is not stated
(stative indeterminative). |
y
occurs as an alternative form to kè after the progressive marker.
The form with y however is of low frequency and |
zero
whenever the context indicates the past tense, no past tense marker is
taken and the verb root in itself would indicate the past tense. |
| (ii)Present
tense.- |
It was already mentioned that Sema does not have a simple present
tense. The present tense is available only with the aspects. The
present tense marker nì occurs after the aspectual marker.
It has no positional variant. |
| (iii)Future
tense.- |
The
future tense marker is nanì. It has two other positional
variants viz., nì and wì. The forms nanì and
nì are in free variation, though there is a slight semantic
difference in these forms, in that the form with nì is less
certain than the one with nanì. Further stylistically, nanì
is more appropriate. wì occurs after the probability marker. |
|
| (b)
Aspects |
There
are two aspects in Sema, viz., progressive and habitual.
The markers along with their positional variants of
these aspects are stated below |
Progressive
aspect.- The marker for the progressive aspect is a.
It has a positional variant, viz. cé. Whereas
a occurs with stationary verbs, |
|
| Habitual
aspect.- |
The
marker for habitual aspect is cé. It has a positional
variant ace. Whereas ce occurs with stationary verbs
ace occurs with mobility verbs. |
|
| (c)
Modals : |
| The
modal markers do not have any positional variants. |
|
| 3.4.
INVARIABLES |
The
occurrence of the variable grammatical classes like the nouns, pronouns,
numerals, verbs along with their grammatical categories were discussed
in the preceding sections. Then it was also stated that a clear distinction
between morphological vs syntactical construction is not always possible.
And therefore, this analysis has more of a functional basis. Accordingly,
the post positions which form a sub-class of invariables were discussed
along with the case relations. In this section, it is proposed to discuss
the other invariables occurring in this language. These are : the adjectives,the
adverbs and particles. A discussion of the occurrences of these invariables
beginning with the adjectives follows : |
| 3.4.1.
Adjectives |
| An adjective
was defined (vide 3.1.) as that sub-class of invariables which on the syntagmatic
axis functions as an attribute of a noun, as in : |
| kaku
kize |
`big
book’ |
kaku kiwi
|
`good
book’ |
ilimì kiwi
|
`good
dame’ |
as bo
kúsuo
|
`tall
tree’ etc. |
|
|
| and is capable
of functioning’ as the nucleus of an adjective phrase as in : |
y ono
yono
kize
|
`very very big’ |
kutumo kt
|
`too
many’ etc. |
|
|
| and is capable
of occurring alone in the NP2, position in equation type of sentences, as
in : |
| pa
nheyce |
`he
(is) blind’ |
apuye akipici
|
`the
boy (is) lazy’ |
atoye khemai
|
`the hill (is) high’ etc. |
|
|
The
adjectives in this type of construction could be claimed morphologically
as verbs, as in this type of sentences, the adjectives are capable of
taking past tense marker as in : |
hiye kize
|
`it (is) big’ |
hiye kizekè1
|
`it
was big’ |
hiye kize sinanì
|
`It will be big’
(lit. it big do will) |
|
|
|
1.
In this type of construction, the verb for `do’ si is dropped both
in the present and past tense. However, in the past tense, the tense marker
appears after the adjective. It might be noted that the Tibeto-Burman
languages being of agglutinative nature had suffixes which were worn away
and lost their significances, resulting into monosyllabic words. Modifications
in terms of time, place etc. are done by compounding, i.e., by adding
to the root a new word having a meaning of its own without incorporating
with the main word. Therefore in this particular instance, the occurrence
of the past tense marker after an adjective cannot be considered as an
inflection of an adjective, rather as an instance of the deletion of the
principal verb. |
