The BG Language Creation Guide

#6: Verbs and Verbal Morphology

Pronouns

Other terms you might use in describing pronouns:

• Gender (masculine, feminine, nueter)
• Animacy (alive or not alive)
• Dual (just two of them)
• Trial (three of them)
• Paucal (a few of them)
• Inclusive (A form of 'we' is inclusive if it includes the person being addressed.
• Exclusive (A form of 'we' is exclusive if it does not include the person being addressed.
• Formality Distinctions

How to Write about Pronouns and Verbs

• To say that a language includes something, like a distinction between first and second person or between singular and plural, or three kinds of past tense, you might say something like: In the pronominal system, LangName distinguishs 1st, 2nd and 3rd person and marks two distinctions in number. When writing in this instance, the verbs 'mark' and 'distinguish' are fairly interchangeable.
• The terms for different kinds of morphemes that can be added to roots are: prefix, suffix, infix, and circumfix. 'affix' is the term that describes all of these. If you don't want to say right away where the morpheme connects to the root, you may call it an affix.
• If the morpheme has more than one form, that is, you you use, for example '-ek' after consonants and '-k' after vowels, you call these two forms allomorphs of the same morpheme. Example, the past tense suffix has two allomorphs: -ek and -k. -ek occurs after consonants and -k occurs after vowels.
• If you use a process (such as vowel lengthening or reduplication) to indicate a change in tense or number or anything else, you can write:
  • "tense is marked by lenghtening the first vowel of the root" or
  • Person is indicated by reduplicating the initial syllable as shown in example xx.
• If what you are talking about is not an affix but rather a word that stands alone, you might say: past tense is indicated by the free function word xxx.
• If verbs are marked to agree with other elements in the sentence such as the subject, you might say: "Verbs agree with subject in person and number as shown below"...
• To talk about how negation, agreement and tense must all be marked on the same verb, you might say: "The morphological template for the verbs is given here..." and then show the order of negation, agreement and tense and verb root: (for example: tense-root-negation-agreement ). You might also say: "verbal morphemes occur in this order" or you might simply describe them one at a time in order in a paragraph. Remember to give examples.