Saturday, January 16, 2016

Imperatives and Exceptional Imperatives in Dairwueh

I decided to include imperatives in Dairwueh for a variety of reasons. Here's a few features:
A number of verbs have slight suppletions, c.f.
ak! (sg), aksu! (pl)
go!
kadu
- go (inf)
ral! (sg) rallu! (pl)
sasalu
- hurry
ten! tessu!
vedeu -
help (inf)
vir! virru!
vesu - to listen

sim! smu!
gesem - tell, say
Some verbs drop part of the root:
bar! (sg), barru! (pl)
barinə - to be careful, to get out of the way, to be careful with something
dig! dixu!
endixu - stand

rud! ruxu!
berugu - leave a place

knu! knuvu!
aknuvu - keep, hold

Most roots lose any final vowel, and apply some morpheme out of the set {-u|-su, -ak|-su, -ar|-sur, -g|-xu}, where the left element is the singular and the right element the plural. The morpheme is lexically determined but tends to follow this schematic:
verbs of states: {-ar, -sur}
verbs of movement: {-ak, -su}
verbs of increase, and of stature: {-g, -xu}
other intransitive verbs: {-u, -su}
transitive verbs of applying a state to something: {-g, -xu}
transitive verbs of movement: {-u, -su}
other transitive verbs {-g, -xu}
Usually, the imperative is fronted, but this is not fully mandatory. There are also some syntactical complications. The main syntactical complication are 'imperatives with overt subjects', where some subject other than the addressee is syntactically in some sense the subject of the imperative. One of these is 'san|sannu', signifying 'look'. It can take a third person "subject".
kreruš san vorge
timberman look! strong
look how strong the timberman is
This might seem as an object, but it turns out that these quirky imperative-subjects can be coordinated as subjects of other verbs:
kreruš san vorge ke darav xogebars doŋbat-ta
timberman look! strong and works harder than smith
It also passes some other subjecthood tests, and therefore, peculiarly enough, qualifies as a subject despite the actual subject of the imperativey part of the verb is the second person.

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