MNCL5 Aspect and Voice

[qiihoskeh]

Note: the orthography used is the short version, which omits predictable vowels, gemination, etc.

Aspect and grammatical voice are marked by medials (non-final suffixes). While voice marking occurs only on non-verb forms, aspect marking can occur with almost any final.

The aspect medials for dynamic verb stems are:
-y- - imperfective
-h- - retrospective
-v- - prospective
with perfective being unmarked. An exception to this is that the imperfective marker is usually omitted with present tense.

Static verb stems don't take the imperfective medial, being naturally imperfective. Another thing to note is that aspect marking doesn't occur with the tenseless final, and usually not on noun stems.

The voice medials are:
-m- - agentive subject (patientive or thematic or no object)
-t- - thematic subject (patientive object)
-g- - thematic subject (agentive object)
with patientive subject (agentive or thematic or no object) being unmarked. The word's argument structure determines which of these can occur.

When both occur, the aspect medials appear first.

There are two other medials that can occur before the voice medials and that derive noun stems; -z- for animate and -n- for inanimate.

Finally, there are other aspect-related medials such as the habitual marker -oft-.

Example:
Ta hoskvuke zo sailoftmok? "Have you heard the singer?"
2-Pat.S hear-Pro-Int-Prs Def-Adj sing-Habt-AgV-Thm.S
[ta: hOs.ku"vuk:e: zo: sai"lOf.tO.mOk]