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Interrogative verbs are an unusual feature of the Minhast verbal system, and are rare cross-linguistically but may be found in other languages such as Takic, a North American language from the Uto-Aztecan family. In many languages, certain interrogative words co-occur with certain verbs with high frequency. Using English as an example, the verbs in the questions "What happened?", "Where are you going?", "Why did you do it?" illustrate that certain verbs, when they take a WH-word as an argument, have a statistically higher probability of picking one or two WH-words above others. In Minhast, the Interrogative Verbs serve as a shortcut, precluding the need for constructing a whole interrogative sentence with at least two constituents, the WH-word and the verb it is serving as an argument to. | Interrogative verbs are an unusual feature of the Minhast verbal system, and are rare cross-linguistically but may be found in other languages such as Takic, a North American language from the Uto-Aztecan family. In many languages, certain interrogative words co-occur with certain verbs with high frequency. Using English as an example, the verbs in the questions "What happened?", "Where are you going?", "Why did you do it?" illustrate that certain verbs, when they take a WH-word as an argument, have a statistically higher probability of picking one or two WH-words above others. In Minhast, the Interrogative Verbs serve as a shortcut, precluding the need for constructing a whole interrogative sentence with at least two constituents, the WH-word and the verb it is serving as an argument to. | ||
Interrogative verbs can either be zero-valent (i.e. an Impersonal Verb), as in ''"Innearaš?" >> *inea-ar-an=š'' [what.happened-PAST-INTRANS=IRREAL] ("What happened?"), univalent, e.g. ''"Nassuriattaharaš?" >> *nassuriat-tah-ar-an=š'' [what.did.do-2S.ABS-PAST=IRREAL] ("What did you do?"), or even divalent, i.e. transitive, e.g. ''"Išpinassuriattaharuš?" >> *šp-nassuriat-tah-u=š'' [CAUS-what.did.do-2S.ERG+3MS.ABS-TRANS=IRREAL] ("What did you make him do?). Interrogative Verbs can be inflected for tense, aspect, person-number (for univalent verbs), and in some cases, theme, as illustrated in the last example. | Interrogative verbs can either be zero-valent (i.e. an Impersonal Verb), as in ''"Innearaš?" >> *inea-ar-an=š'' [what.happened-PAST-INTRANS=IRREAL] ("What happened?"), univalent, e.g. ''"Nassuriattaharaš?" >> *nassuriat-tah-ar-an=š'' [what.did.do-2S.ABS-PAST=IRREAL] ("What did you do?"), or even divalent, i.e. transitive, e.g. ''"Išpinassuriattaharuš?" >> *šp-nassuriat-tah-u=š'' [CAUS-what.did.do-2S.ERG+3MS.ABS-TRANS=IRREAL] ("What did you make him do?). | ||
Interrogative Verbs can be inflected for tense, aspect, person-number (for univalent verbs), and in some cases, theme, as illustrated in the last example. Moreover, the Irrealis marker ''-š'' is obligatory. | |||
Where person-number marking is allowed, both second and third person singular/plural marking predominate; first person marking is infrequent. Many of these verbs appear to have a default tense, usually in the past but sometimes in the future, even though the verb has no explicit tense marking, e.g. ''maymaštahaš'' seems to have a default past tense even though the past tense affix ''-ar-'' does not appear; however if the past tense affix appears, the verb remains well-formed. Present tense meaning, if intended, is usually recoverable from context or discourse. | Where person-number marking is allowed, both second and third person singular/plural marking predominate; first person marking is infrequent. Many of these verbs appear to have a default tense, usually in the past but sometimes in the future, even though the verb has no explicit tense marking, e.g. ''maymaštahaš'' seems to have a default past tense even though the past tense affix ''-ar-'' does not appear; however if the past tense affix appears, the verb remains well-formed. Present tense meaning, if intended, is usually recoverable from context or discourse. | ||