Hantza/Verbs

Personal marking

Verbs in Hantza have polypersonal agreement:

• First person singular
• First person plural
• Second person singular
• Second person plural
• Third person animate singular
• Third person animate plural
• Third person inanimate
• Obviative
• Indefinite
• Reflexive
• Reciprocal

Mode

Grammatical tense is not a significant category in Hantza verbs (though there is an overt morphological future/non-future distinction). Verbs are instead aspect and mood heavy. This conflation of tense, aspect and mood is termed "mode" in Hantza; there are thirteen such modes.

• Imperfective (unmarked)
• Iterative
• Delimitative
• Perfective
• Retrospective
• Future
• Inchoative
• Cessative
• Irrealis
• Optative
• Cohortative
• Imperative
• Jussive

Copula

In Hantza there is no verb that corresponds directly to the English "to be".

A common way of expressing the verb "to be" in Hantza is by using a particle.

When talking being in the sense of location the irregular verb ABCDEFG is used. This may be translated variously as "to be", "to stay", "to remain", "to become" or "to get".

A noun can also be turned into a verb that means "to be X" by adding a copular prefix to the root noun. The relevant prefixes marking person and mode are then added. This strategy is only used when the subject of the noun is not being modified by anything adjective-like. In such case the normal copular construction is used.

Possession

Nor is there a verb "to have".

Statives

Stative verbs include predicative adjectives.

Transitivity and valency

Hantza is extremely strict in regard to a given verb's transitivity and valency and its required prefixes.

Mediopassive

There is a mediopassive voice which is formed by an infix inserted in the verb stem.

Evidentiality

Evidentiality is marked on the verb by a suffix.