Chlouvānem/Exterior and interior verbs: Difference between revisions

Non-volitional actions expressed by interior verbs may however have an explicit agent when that agent is typically human and the action was accidental, e.g. with ''juniake'' "to paint":

:: I painted the wall red. = It is the wall I painted red. [it was my intention to do so] (exterior)

:: I accidentally painted the wall red. [i.e. I tripped and dropped a tin of paint on the wall] (interior)

In the second sentence, we see the interior verb marking the lack of any intention to paint the wall red, and the semantic agent (here, the <small>1SG</small> pronoun ''lili'') is furthermore marked with the instrumental rather than with the ergative case, as interior verbs cannot take any ergative case argument.

Note that this does not apply to all verbs that are semantically characterized by a lack of volition; for example, ''sturake'' (to fall) is usually only used in the exterior, as is ''pudbhe'' (to sleep).<br/>

It is not, however, dependent on parameters such as transitivity, as shown by an intransitive (in Chlouvānem) verb such as ''nilyake'' "to think":

Note, furthermore, that some verbs are semantically characterized by volition or lack thereof (often with the volitive verb being formed starting from the other by means of a prefix, especially ''ta-''), so can't be used this way. An example also found in English and other languages is the pair ''milge'' (root ''mind-'') "to hear" and ''tamilge'' (''ta-mind-'') "to listen"; ''mišake'' "to see" and ''tamišake'' "to watch, look at" is another.