The Arden Reference Grammar

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Morphology of Verbs

Verbs inflect for tense, finiteness, subject agreement and definiteness. Infinitive forms are used as nouns and therefore also inflect for case as if they were plain nouns.

There are four tenses: imperative, present, past and future. The imperative is morphologically unmarked and lacks the finite/infinitive distinction. Tense is marked by means of the following agglutinative suffixes:

Suffixes come in two variants, a front one and a back one, which are selected according to vowel harmony. For verbs that only contain the vowel /a/, the back allomorph is employed. Infinitives are marked by appending -de/do to the tense marker.

Subject cross-referencing is marked through a set of enclitic bound pronouns which are common to nouns and verbs. Cross-referencing is mandatory, and it always refers to the absolutive function (the unique argument of intransitive verbs and the patient argument of transitive verbs). Definiteness is marked by means of regular stress shift, as explained below.

Antipassive voice is currently being pondered.

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