Kirtumur: Difference between revisions

Since Kirtumur has far fewer adjectives, than a language like English, it often uses other types of words to express concepts which are adjectival from an English point of view. For instance, some adjectives are nouns morphologically: '''''namalŋir''' thuttuknu'' "noble clothes" (lit. "nobility clothes-3Poss"), or ''ni'''namikim''' am'' "desolate place" (lit. "in solitude place"). Other (the majority) are verb-like: ''ŋiri '''hila''''' "strong person" ("person-Abs. be-strong"), ''xōl '''eya''''' "long container". In Old Kersal texts (and thus in the earliest form of Kirtumur) verb-like adjectives were differentiated from verbs by a process, called ablaut: ''fela'' "to be strong (verb)", ''itefele'' "to strengthen" – ''fili'' "strong (adjective)". Negation was also different: ''ma/mi fili'' "not strong". In later Kirtumur the forms coincided: ''hela'' "to be strong (stative)", ''hilekha'' "not to be strong, not strong", but ''hilela'' "to strengthen". Adjectival morphology is very straightforward, they have only two possible forms: the simple stem, without any modification, or the reduplicated stem. The latter is used to make other verbs or adjectives: ''sena'' "new (Cirdamur loanword)" – ''cencena'' "brand new, the newest"; ''lepa'' "old" – ''lillepa'' "former". However, reduplication does not apply to all adjectives in the same way: ''wō(-a)'' "big" – ''wauha'' "getting big".

Adjectives are mostly used attributively to modify nouns. The normal word order is then for an adjective to follow the modified noun and to precede all other parts of the noun phrase: ''par '''khura''''' "'''clean''' road", ''munušar '''sena''''' "'''new''' shrine". True adjectives, on the other hand, precede the noun they modify and do not allow any words between them, thus practically attaching to the modified noun as a prefix: '''''Ōl'''-entiri'' "the '''Blue''' God", '''''ayu'''-ŋirak'' "the sky people". An attributively used adjective can have an adverbial function. This occurs particularly often with idiomatic combinations of verbs and nouns: ''Khaē '''kina''''' "She/He does it '''properly'''", ''phas-ka/kha phasa'' "abundantly, in excess" (lit. "doing widely").

The predicative usage is also common, with or without the addition of the copula clitic: ''ōkina-x'' "you are right"; ''ixak '''ual'''ennu'' "whose qualities are '''great'''"; ''i-ōtumta '''kina''''' "what you have said is true".

===Verbs===

A clause is a grammatical unit that consists of a predicate and the elements that accompany it. Kirtumur has nominal, copular and verbal clauses, the predicate of the latter is a verb. Verbs refer to a large variety of actions and states. The number and kinds of participants involved differ between different actions and states and thus between different verbs. Kirtumur distinguishes between intransitive and transitive verbs. An intransitive verbal clause is a construction with an intransitive subject and a predicate, while a transitive clause also includes one or more objects, different from a transitive subject. Thus different relations between the parts of a clause are possible: ergative, accusative and tripartite. Kirtumur is a tripartite language, because it treats all three functions (intransitive subject, transitive subject and objects) differently. Its case marking on nouns is entirely on an ergative basis, meaning that the transitive subject is in the ergative case, while both the direct object and the intransitive subject are in the absolutive case. On the other hand, intransitive verbs receive different person markers that transitive verbs, thus marking the intransitive subject and the direct object differently. The imperative form of verbs show the accusative system in which both the transitive and intransitive subjects are treated in the same way. Subjunctive forms also used to show the accusative system, but it fully changed to the ergative system early in the history of Kirtumur. Some archaic non-finite constructions also follow the accusative system, for example: ''Ikur xatathiweis entiru ualanu'' "the great gods (are) about to become one", where ''tatheis'' is a future active infinitive meaning "about to become". Here ''entiru'' "two gods" is in the absolutive, despite being a subject. These constructions are rare outside fixed expressions and old texts.