Lesson 3

Lesson 3: Verb Morphology

Add tense, mood, and negation to roots in the fixed verbal suffix order.

Verbs stay agglutinative

Verbal morphology is fully regular. You start with the root, then add tense, then mood, then negation if needed. The language does not fuse these categories together.

Worked examples

taku       = goes / travels
taku-pa    = went
taku-ka    = will go
taku-ke    = would go
taku-se    = go!
taku-ka-nu = will not go
taku-pa-ke = would have gone

What to watch

If -nu appears anywhere except the end, the form is wrong. That one rule removes a lot of ambiguity when you read longer predicates.

Transfer drill

Take another root such as maku and try the same stack: maku-pa, maku-ka-nu, maku-ke.

Self-check 1

Turn taku into future negative.

Self-check 2

What is the correct order of tense, mood, and negation?

Self-check 3

Build 'would have gone' from taku.

Self-check 4

How do you say 'don't go'?