Ćwarmin: Participles - an outline

The Ćwarmin verb morphology contains a system of participles, and these contribute a significant amount of mileage in the morphosyntax of the verb phrase.

Morphology

A primary division among the participles is that of transitivity: intransitive participles are merely infinitives with case suffixes. There is no reason to distinguish active from passive for an intransitive participle. However, some exceptional verbs exist - both intransitive verbs marked as transitive ones, and vice versa. [See this for more.]

The nominative is explicitly marked with -ij/-uw, but the other cases behave like any other noun case. Tense is not distinguished for intransitive participles. The perfect aspect can be marked by the suffix -em/-am, but is not mandatory. No explicit imperfect aspect marker exists.

Transitive verbs' participles, however, are formed with the marker -nem(e)-/-nam(a)- for active participles, and -yezi-/-wozu- for passive ones.

TAM is somewhat distinguished, with the active transitive verb having {perfect, imperfect} x {present, past} and the passive transitive verb having {perfect, imperfect}. 

The transitive active participle defaults to imperfect present. The reduplicated suffixes -nenem/-nanam convey perfect past. The past imperfect adds an -et/-at, but reducing the first syllable: -nmet, -nmat. Past perfect is a further reduplication- -memet/-mamat.

The passive morpheme -yezi/-wozu implies perfect aspect, but an extra morpheme -te/-ta gives the imperfect. In some eastern dialects, single -yezi/-wozu gives imperfect, -jejesd/-wowosd gives perfect. (In turn, we find dissimilated forms like -yedzest/-wolost, -źejest/-lowost, -rejest/-lowost, -jerest/-wolost, and even weird combos of them, as well as -ejdź/-owdz).

Usages

Participles in general

Participles function as adjectives and adverbs, expressing what someone is/was doing or what they were experiencing. More complex relations to the verb than subject, object or recipient generally requires rewriting as a clearly delineated subclause. However, the main verb in a subclause is often also inflected as a participle. Thus, participles could, at least partially, be considered subordinate finite verbs. (Non-relative subclauses tend to have normal finite verbs a bit more often, but this is not mandatory.)

• With verbs of perception to express subordinate actions ('see someone eating' etc)
• With some verbs of causation and other transitivity changing operations
  
• Heads of the verb phrase in relative subclauses
  

 

 The active participle

The active participles (i.e. the transitive active one, or the intransitive one) are used for these roles besides the prototypical subordinate verbal use:

• copositive present tense verbs (there is a post upcoming about what they are)
• This is restricted to the imperfect aspect form, but this does not convey an actual imperfect aspect, but rather copies the aspect of a different verb in the copositive construction)
  
• head of the verb phrase in relative subclauses, and sometimes other subclauses as well
• (were used as gerunds for a while in late middle Cwarmin)
  
• with some auxiliaries to express certain moods
• with some causative constructions and some embedded constructions (perceive someone doing something, etc)
• expressing general, impersonal things like 'it's raining', 'it's sunsetting', 'it's night', etc.
• Expressing 'while X:ing' or 'after X:ing' when used as an adverb, depending on the aspect used. The passive requires a periphrastic expression for this. 
• In place of a finite verb in expressions of surprise or adoration or appreciation.
• (transitive active only) used to express the additional verbal specifications as to how a direct object is affected by the subject's action
  
• (transitive active only) combined with the dative to express that the dative argument desires to do something
  

 The passive participle

• copositive present tense verbs (restricted to perfect aspect form, but the actual aspect is implicit)
  
• head of the verb phrase in relative subclauses, but never in other types of subclauses
• with some auxiliaries to express some voices
• can form temporal adverbs for 'before/after/while being X:ed' with adpositions.

The imperfect participle

• exhortation to continue
• in combination with the verb 'hold', signifying 'having the energy to go on doing x'

The perfect participle

This lists features that unify the passive and active perfect participles, but differ from the passive and active present participles.

• with some verbs, as an imperative of cessation. This especially in combination with the conjunction 'and'. This is mostly used with active perfect participles, but some passive participles are also used - usually ones whose argument structure is a bit unusual.
  
• with some verbs, as an imperative of immediate action.
  

Ćwarmin: Sometimes Mandatorily Passive Verbs

Ćwarmin has a set of verbs which require passive forms whenever some requirements for the subject is violated. These requirements come in three main types, two of which relate to the animacy hierarchy. This requirement seems to be related to the inverse alignment of Ŋʒädär, but not an inherited cognate - rather, it may be due to convergence with Ŋʒädär.

1. Absolute Animacy Hierarchy Restrictions

The verb 'kill' only permits animate subjects, but can take non-animate agents, and thus has an absolute restriction on the hierarchy restriction - basically, there is a line drawn across the hierarchy which limits it. With inanimate agents, the passive is required, and the agent is in the general ablative case.

A typical example of this would be the verb 'kill', which cannot take a proper inanimate subject, so e.g.

*ilmis arbaŋ-utus kerb-i-ś
*winter killed the herd

arbaŋ ilm-erəś kerb-eśp
the herd was killed by the winter

*nəlve iś kerb-i-ś
an arrow killed him

i nəlv-erəś kerb-eśp
(s)he was killed by an arrow

Another would be 'utter/express/signal/...', which basically is the same verb as 'exhale', hifnəs.

*ədnist marćost-uc hifn-i-ś
silence expresses agreement

marćost ədnist-erəś hifn-e-kn-eśp
agreement is expressed through silence (note: -e-kn- is really the applicative morpheme -ken-, and the reason the applicative is used here has to do with the argument structure of hifn-, which really means something like 'breathe'; consider the -ken- similar to a prefixed preposition or adverb, only, it does not appear in the active forms of the verb all that often).

All  of these need to be rendered in the passive (or applicative) to be grammatical in Ćwarmin.

2. Relative Animacy Hierarchy Restrictions

With many verbs, a less animate noun cannot be subject with a verb whose object is more animate. These include any verb indicating fights (ampac, nenŋel, ćasćar - all signifying fighting), causing movement sideways or upwards (hegec - push, hegtəm - pull, salkum - lift, raise, kunkun - to shake to-and-fro, vabžum - pull in by rope, liŋbəl - to move a significant distance by pulling, žal - to carry),...

The main difference here from the previous class is that low-ranked nouns can be subjects, provided the object has lower or equal rank. Thus,

ćiriŋ kosdan-uc salkum-i-ś
the tripod lifts the tent fabric

onkup estnet-uc hegədm-i-ś
the weight pulls the rope

are permitted, but not

*onkup vond-uc hegədm-i-ś
the weight pulls the horse

which would require

vond onkup-araś hegt-eśp

3. Lexically Specified

This is an odd, but limited bunch.

mamnan -  to put a child to sleep

Only the mother of the child can be the proper subject, any other agent must be oblique.

ŋačćur  - to wear a piece of clothing

The restriction here is related to tense rather than to subject or object - non-present and non-imperative must be passive.

biəkin - to endure

Passive whenever the object is not indefinite.

luzǯar -  to praise

passive whenever the object is inanimate.

Ŋʒädär: Introduction to the Perfective side of the TAM system

Beyond the reduplication mentioned here, Ŋʒädär is rich in moods and aspects. Its tense system permits rather complicated things by auxiliaries, but for a clause without an auxiliary, there are two tenses: past and non-past, which are not distinguished in all moods. Auxiliaries are used for specific times such as 'yesterday', and in combination with aspect forms, obtain forms like 'until yesterday', 'since yesterday', 'intermittently a long time ago', etc.

Non-past is generally not marked by any morpheme, although a handful of verbs do get the marker -vul/vıl/vil/vül- in the inverse when the verb is non-past, instead of the usual marker. These are verbs of perception, of opinion, and of mental states in general. The morpheme originates with the noun *vurl that in Proto-ŊƷD signified the 'soul' of animals. The reason for this only appearing in the non-past tense may originate with some kind of belief that animal cognition did not much care about the past - that animals were more present-centered than man, and this fits with ideas about animal psychology in ŊƷD superstitions throughout the ŊƷD tribes.

The past is marked by a suffix after the aspect marker, but before the person marking. This suffix appears in the realis, optative and dubitative, and takes the form -(I)c'l(I)-.

Beyond this, we get the aspect system. The location of the aspect marker is immediately after the verb root, sometimes causing slight morphophonological alterations of the root itself. The perfective marker has somewhat merged with modal markers.

Perfective, realis:

-mOl-

After stops, this mutates into

-wOl-

Before velar sounds and -w-, the -l- is lost, and before -v-, it's lost while turning the -v- into -w-.  The -m-/-w- part can cause a variety of other things as well: -pw- and -tw- tend to become -kw-. -nm- becomes -m(:)- or -n(:)-. Depending on dialect, -wm- becomes -m(:)-.

Note: intrinsically perfect verbs do not take this marker, unless the perfectivity is emphasized.

Infinitives do not form perfectives by agglutination, but rather as phrases consisting of two infinitives, with the second infinitive being 'modan', which never appears in any inflected form (since it has been subsumed into the morphology of the finite verb.)

Perfective, optative:

-mUksA-

After stops, this mutates into

-wUksA-, where if U = u, the w- further vanishes.

The -m(closed vowel)- part of these morphemes comes from a particle, 'mod', which was a reduction of the verb 'took' and came to signify perfectiveness. -ksA- comes from a similar particle, 'okta', which signified 'maybe'. The optative perfect is always intransitive. If the verb usually would be transitive, the perfect optative is understood as a passive.

Perfect, conditional

-OlOb-

If followed by a morpheme beginning in a labial, this turns into -OlwO-.

The historical origin is a noun olob, signifying 'circumstance, case, chance, fate'.

Perfective, imperative:

-rOn (sg)
-rOndA (pl)

From the imperative form of the verb 'go'. The marker that exists in other related languages had been lost, and the auxiliary 'go!' slowly was merged into the verb morphology. Certain verbs have their own exceptional forms.

Perfective, dubitative

The dubitative marks things that are somewhat unsure. The historical origin is a suffix -EŋdzE, whose further origins probably lie in an assimilated auxiliary. The suffix now is -ŋŋE

Ćwarmin Voice Markers beyond the Passive

Ćwarmin has some more voices beyond the passive and active, but unlike the active voice, all of them use the passive -aśp morpheme for the third person, and lack person marking for first and second person subjects. The main voices beyond passive and dative-passive are the causative (of intransitives), and the causative (of transitives). There is also a detransitive-habitual aspect-voice combination.

Morphologically, there is some overlap between the two causatives. Almost all causatives of intransitives are entirely unmarked in the present tense, as are a handful of causatives of transitives. A few entirely regular such verbs are:

taun - sit, seat
wecəm - smile, make someone smile
gaxar - laugh, make someone laugh
miler - rise, raise
colan - sink, submerge

Some intransitives that are marked in the present causative include

pəlnəm - jump
polnom - jump
kəjn - run

The few transitives that are not marked in the present causative are

taslon - leave, make someone leave
kolkor - carry, load
kolćojn - carry, send

In all other TAMs but the present indicative tense, the intransitive causative has the marker -ka(n)-/-ke(n)-, and takes either no person suffix (for 1st and 2nd person) or the passive suffix -aśp/-eśp for the third person. A more "neutral" way of describing -aśp/-eśp would be as a non-canonic voice marker, which in the absense of other markers is parsed as a passive.

The causative, further, has the causee in either the accusative or the nominative, often depending on the amount of coercion or force involved (nominative indicating less such).

The use of the causative voice is clearly and easily related to the structure of a fact: someone made someone be or do something, and that is what is being expressed. Asking someone to do something, telling them to do something, suggesting they do something, placing them in a situation where they are forced to or even prone to do something is all considered forms of causation.

A further voice marker is a sort of passive causative, which is formed by -kar(u)-/-kər(i)-. This passive causative signifies a few different meanings:

(being made to do something (subject in nominative))
doing something with little volition involved (subject in genitive)
resigning to doing something (subject in dative)
accidentally doing something (subject in genitive, aspect being punctual)

No matter the case of the subject with these forms, the congruence works similarly to the passive: -aśp/-eśp for third person, no marker for first and second person.

Usage of the passive causative is more pragmatically marked, mainly indicating that something is accidental, non-volitional or even somewhat undesirable. Sometimes there is no causer stated, and this basically communicates that there is no causer but that the whole state described by the verb is very untowards according to the speaker or the subject.

There is a further voice, the applicative. It turns a locative of any type or an instrument into a direct object. For transitive verbs, it also permits turning the object into an instrumental, although we also find speakers that permit retaining the direct object as an accusative direct object (thus having two direct objects). The applicatives morpheme is -tak-/-tək-.

With locatives the kind of locative (that is, direction or location) correlates with the aspect of the verb.

i	releś	-imməś	forxo	-rga	-tak-	-aśp
3sg.def	door	paucal definite accusative	carry by wagon	perfective non-past indicative	applicative	non-active 3sg
he	the doors	(a few)	deliver (by wagon)

he delivers all the way to the doors(paucal)

This serves to emphasize a non-patient argument or to make it available for certain syntactical operations.

Detail #4: Verb-congruence failure

A language where verb congruence fails in these cases:

In the following circumstances, the person congruence is conflated with a third person verb form:

• negative reflexive verbs
• any existential verbs (including verbs of motion or location, when used in an existential manner, such as "there are so-and-so running around on our back yard")
• presence of non-subject topics
• 
  

This specific third person form is also used with third person subjects - both singular and plural - for expressing:

• with verbs of physical actions it marks plural subjects not acting in a concerted manner
• most often with copulas for any subject person
• lack of volition for third person
• nonspecificity of singular subject

Verb congruence also fails when a noun is used to denote a full class of things, so that the plural verb is used even with singular subjects, e.g.

• caviar is fish eggs
• cars have engines
• the antelope is an African mammal

all would have plural congruence on the verb. When the upper set of rules and this set of rules conflict, which one is chosen is in free variation.