Friday, June 19, 2015

Ćwarmin: Mood-dependent clitics

Although Ćwarmin has few morphologically explicit moods, it has a number of clitics that are restricted by "implicit" moods. This means that the mood may be implied by other means without these showing up - but these being there is a definite sign that that mood is what's rolling.

Indicative

-kot | -čet
Strengthens affirmation.

-sis | -sus

Marks surprisingness or relieved doubt - 'he arrived, after all'.

-jri | -vru
Somewhat like 'surely, certainly'.

Conditional

-ŋin | -ŋun
-ili | -ulu
As far as meaning goes these are pretty much identical. They emphasize a constituent, i.e. "if you sell at a loss" vs. "if you sell at a loss" vs. "if you sell at a loss".

Permissive mood

-nir | -nur
-nir/-nur might be seen as a kind of apprehensive permissive marker: go (then, if that's what you want), "okay, do it, I don't care".
-sur | -sir
-sur/-sir marks an almost jovial granting of permission - "sure, go ahead, eat as much as you like!". 

Both of these can go on any constituent.

Negative Permissive

-bət|-bat
 This serves to distinguish certain possible parsings of negative permission - if it goes on the negative particle, it means 'you are permitted not to', if it goes on any other constituent, it marks 'you are not permitted to'.

Alethic 

 -nti | -ntu
 Serves to emphasize an element.

Negative Alethic

-biśe|-buso
Often goes on the negative particle, but can go on the head of any constituent phrase to emphasize it. On nouns, it emphasizes that it is this particular noun or type of noun that cannot be so-and-so, on verbs that it is this particular verb that cannot be carried out with these particular arguments.

Imperative

-ara | -ərə
Intensifies the imperative. It is considered quite rude.

-vars | -vers
An encouraging marker, "yes, keep going on like that".

-ruč | -rič
An adversarial marker, "bring it on". 

A certain related marker

A separate marker that has an origin as a similar clitic is the -vin|-vun marker that can go on third person pronouns. With this suffix, the pronoun becomes a generic person, much like the German 'man' pronoun, or the Finnish passive verb or English 'one' or generic 'you'.

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