Bryatesle was somewhat inspired by Hebrew at the time, and therefore did not have any tenses. What it does have is an aspect system, although the marked aspects are more closely related to telicity than to perfect-imperfect or perfective-imperfective.
Both telic and atelic verbs showcase rather similar morphology:
ḑet, to run
1sg ḑet - diţat
2sg ḑer - diţar
3sg ḑei - diţai
3sg.n. ḑer - diţa
1pl ḑim - diţam
II pl ḑine/diņe - diţane
III plh diḑes - diţanes
III pln ḑei/ḑer - diţanei/diţa
The somewhat unrealistic morphophonemic dissimilation that causes some dental consonants to turn into postalveolar and vice versa in the vicinity of other similar sounds accounts for the change in the initial consonant in these words. The vowel changes are even less regular, but this example accounts for quite a large number of verbs. The left column holds the atelic forms, the right one the telic forms.
Bryatesle has three conjugations that all are pretty annoyingly huge, with a few verbs having an additional past tense form. These are sometimes coordinated with regular verbs to construct tense forms, but are far from mandatory.
The Imperative can be formed in a few different ways: attaching the suggestion marker morpheme to the 2nd person verb, for one, can attain such a function. The suggestion marker on the object can also have a similar effect. Finally, having a noun in the vocative case followed by a second or third person verb is often a way of constructing an optative or imperative sense, depending on the person of the verb. Finally, the object sometimes is in the exclamative in such sentences.
Other modal forms do not exist, but are attained by other types of markers, primarily determiners in noun phrases serve to mark various types of irrealis.
No comments:
Post a Comment