Quiet Words

Orthography and Some Phonology

Consonants

Vowels

Syllables

Stress

Argument Structure

• The subject's role is indicated by a suffix on the verb; the roles of the other arguments are indicated using prepositions.


• However, if the first argument after the verb has the expected role, the preposition is omitted; pronouns become enclitics. Are there also proclitic pronouns?


• An affix may be needed for when the expected second argument doesn't appear. This may be implied for deverbal nouns.


• Prepositions which don't indicate basic roles move with the phrase when it moves to the subject position. There's a single "voice" suffix for all of these.
  
  
• Agent is marked like Donor.


• Patient and Perceiver are marked like Recipient.


• Intransitive subject is marked like either Patient or Agent. Note that this may require an additional argument moved to the subject to manifest.


• Object is distinct from both Patient and Agent.


• Possessor and Location/Reference Point are distinct from Object, Patient, and Agent.


• There's possibly a Genitive, replacing the original Donor, Recipient, or Object marking after nouns.


• There's probably a Vocative as well.


• Instrument may also use a basic preposition.


• Location, Time, and Manner may be indicated by special words.



• A subject is marked as definite by placing the clitic |ho| before the verb (but |i| is used instead if the subject is a pronoun or a proper noun). Other arguments are marked as definite by placing |o| in front of them (but after any preposition).


• There are probably additional determiners.



• Words for some spatial (and other) relations may normally act as prepositions, requiring affixes in order to function as verbs or nouns.


• Some other words may normally act as adverbs and also require conversion affixes.


• The copula is prefixed to a simple predicate noun and otherwise stands alone.


• Possibly, the copula morpheme is used as a prefix to convert prepositions and adverbs to verbs. Conversion to nouns will also involve prefixes (or relative particle).



• Basic adjective forms (positive and superlative) act like nouns, but derived forms (comparative, evolutive, inceptive(?), cessative(?), viative, and satisfactive) act like verbs.



• Relative and Serial verbs are marked as such with various proclitics.


• Serial and Complement verbs have a special marking for when no argument is coreferential. Possibly, this marking is also used to indicate that a Main verb is impersonal.


• Complement Verbs have a special marking for when the subject is coreferential with the auxiliary's subject.



• Basic TAM are either prefixed to the stem or precede the verb (or other word).



• A partitive phrase is constructed by placing a quantifier in front of a definite phrase.


• The superlative of an adjective is indicated by placing the basic form of the adjective in front of a partitive phrase.


• There should be a preposition indicating Standard of Comparison used with comparatives.


• There should also be a preposition indicating Degree of Comparison.



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