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Minhast: Difference between revisions
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# Event | # Event | ||
Interrogative verbs are an unusual feature of the Minhast verbal system, and are rare cross-linguistically. 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. | Interrogative verbs are an unusual feature of the Minhast verbal system, and are rare cross-linguistically. 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. ''"Nansuriattaharaš?" >> *nansuriat-tah-ar-an=š'' [what.did.do-2S.ABS-PAST=IRREAL] ("What did you do?"), or even divalent, i.e. transitive, e.g. ''"Išpinansuriattaharuš?" >> *šp-nansuriat-tah-ar-u=š'' [CAUS-what.did.do-2S.ERG+3MS.ABS] ("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. ''"Nansuriattaharaš?" >> *nansuriat-tah-ar-an=š'' [what.did.do-2S.ABS-PAST=IRREAL] ("What did you do?"), or even divalent, i.e. transitive, e.g. ''"Išpinansuriattaharuš?" >> *šp-nansuriat-tah-ar-u=š'' [CAUS-what.did.do-2S.ERG+3MS.ABS] ("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. | ||