Wenetic Scratchpad- NP: Gods above.

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Re: Wenetic Scratchpad- NP: Strong verbs pt2, the past tense

Post by hwhatting »

Dewrad wrote:
hwhatting wrote:So no traces of Aorist or Imperfect? This part indeed looks very Germanic.
If I'm honest, I guess I'd say that I've reconciled the Germanic and Balto-Slavic verbal systems by using the Germanic system for strong verbs and the Balto-Slavic for weak verbs.
Did I miss the past for the weak verbs? Or haven't you posted it yet?

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Re: Wenetic Scratchpad- NP: Strong verbs pt2, the past tense

Post by Hallow XIII »

He has not posted any weak verb stuff yet.
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Re: Wenetic Scratchpad- NP: Strong verbs pt2, the past tense

Post by Dewrad »

I have not. Until now:

Weak Verbs

Weak verbs, synchronically, are by far a more straightforward class. Most weak conjugations have the same stem for both thre present and past tenses, all have only one accentual pattern. The desinences are straightforward: in the present tense they generally correspond to those of an iotated class 1 strong verb.

Diachronically, however, they're a fucking mess. Comprised of the remnants of PIE's infixed athematic presents, denominative verbs and all kinds of shit. Analogy has run riot throughout the paradigms, however.

There are five weak conjugations. The first two, which have a slightly different past stem, are generally referred to as "Semi-Strong" verbs and are typified by gemination of the root consonant in the present tense. The others all have distinct vowels as their stem formants but otherwise inflect identically. A handy table of the stem formants in each conjugation follows:

Image

As I say, this is all pretty straightforward, so let's look at some paradigms. We've got *gerrâ- 'proclaim', *pilláw- 'fill', *pʰâ- 'recite', *ǯnê- 'ooze' and *pirtá- 'frighten'.

Present Indicative Active

Image


Present Subjunctive Active

Image


Present Indicative Passive

Image


Present Subjunctive Passive

Image

None of these should present any difficulty. Note how the desinences are pretty much uniform accross the conjugations, with the exception of class 2.

On to the past tense, again nice and easy:

Past Indicative

Image


Past Subjunctive

Image

The personal desinences are directly descended from those of the PIE athematic aorist, augmented by the perfect desinences. Nice and simple. Next up irregular verbs and non-finite constructions.
Last edited by Dewrad on Thu Sep 19, 2013 12:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Wenetic Scratchpad- NP: Weak verbs

Post by hwhatting »

The weak past has a bit of a Baltic vibe. Looks nice!

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Re: Wenetic Scratchpad- NP: Weak verbs

Post by Dewrad »

Thanks! It's kind of what I was aiming for.

I have to say that I'm getting a touch bored with just dealing with Proto-Wenetic. The next post might sketch some features I'm toying with for the daughter languages. At the moment, I'm thinking of three main dialect groupings, which I'm labelling Insular, Littoral and Riparian. They're going to form something of a dialect chain, with Insular being the most innovative (probably with a fair amount of Low German and Scandinavian influence: I'm thinking of situating this group on Rügen and the opposing Pomeranian coast), while Riparian will be Wenetic's "Lithuanian", remaining relatively archaic in structure. Would a map help with this?
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Re: Wenetic Scratchpad- NP: Weak verbs

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Re: Wenetic Scratchpad- NP: Weak verbs

Post by Dewrad »

An Interlude: The Daughter Languages

Very well. Let's start with some maps. Below is a map giving the locations of the various language groupings circa 50CE. We've got the Proto-Wenetic Urheimat located around the lower Vistula and the Bay of Gdansk. Broadly speaking, this corresponds to the area inhabited by the archaeological Oksywie culture. To the south we have Slavic-speaking peoples, to the west we have (East) Germanic speakers and to the East are the (Western) Balts.

Image

Fast forward some five or six centuries, and we are at the other end of the great Age of Migrations, wherein population movement fucked up not only the Western Roman Empire but also Northern Europe's demographic map. As you can see, the Veneti have expanded from their original homeland, moving west and south into those areas vacated by the wandering East Germanic tribes. At about this time we begin to see far greater divergence between Wenetic varieties, and the crystallisation of the later daughter languages. Now the Wenetic heartlands lie in Pomerania and the upper reaches of the Oder.

Image

(For reference, let's include a few toponyms: *Wêdorā is Proto-Wenetic for the Oder, while *Wéstilā is the Vistula.)

And moving on to some linguistics!

I've only really thought about soundchange so far, rather than morphosyntactic change (it would perhaps be wiser to wait until I've got the bulk of PW's morphosyntax up before doing so), but I'm fairly certain on what I want from the family.

Broadly speaking, the Wenetic languages can be divided into two groups: the Northern languages, comprising Littoral and Insular, and the Southern, consisting solely of Riparian. The two Northern varieties share a number of common innovations which are absent from Riparian. Let's have a look at the salient features of each variety in turn, starting with the one I find most interesting at the moment:

Littoral

Provisionally, Pemáršk (from PW *pa-máriška 'by the sea').

Like the Insular varieties, Littoral Wenetic shifts the aspirated stops pʰ tʰ čʰ kʰ to voiceless fricatives /f θ ʃ x/ and affricates become simple fricatives, so č ǯ become /ʃ ʒ/.

The most interesting thing about Littoral is the changes in the vowel system. Firstly, unstressed short vowels become laxed, subsequently undergoing a series of mergers: i e become /ɪ/, u o become /ʊ/, a becomes /ǝ/ and the nasal vowels merge as a central nasalised vowel /ɨ̃/. Original diphthongs monophthongise, with ai ei merging as /ɛ/ and au becoming /ɔ/. Unstressed long vowels shorten, so ā ē ī ū ą̄ į̄ ų̄ > /a e i u ã ẽ õ/ (note the lowering of the high nasal vowels as well there). Stressed long vowels undergo diphthongisation, the outcome varying according to whether the PW accent was rising or falling. Rising î ê â û became /i̯e i̯æ i̯a u̯o/, while falling ǐ ě ǎ ǔ became /ei̯ æi̯ au̯ ou̯/. The rising nasal vowels retained their nasalisation, with į̂ ę̂ ą̂ ų̂ becoming /i̯ẽ i̯æ̃ i̯ã u̯õ/ like their oral counterparts, while falling nasal vowels decoupled, becoming simple oral vowel + homorganic nasal consonant sequences, with attendant lowering of the high vowels, so į̌ ę̌ ą̌ ų̌ > /en æn an on/.

This last, decoupling of nasal vowels, also occurred with the short central nasal vowel in auslaut, becoming /in/. Medially, the phoneme merged with /ǝ/.

Finally, the lax vowels were lost in auslaut and intertonically, which is really going to mess with the declension and verbal systems. So, for some flavour:

wiǽdra /ˈwi̯ædra/ < *Wêdorā
wéskla /ˈweskla/ < *Wéstilā
wénd /ˈwend/ < *wénida
žniæd /ˈʒni̯æd/ < *ǯnêyidi
ęn dwau trę kidwár pank /ˈɛn ˈdwau ˈtrɛ kiˈdwar ˈpãk/ < *áina dwǎ tréyi kedwári pę́ki
dęwá /dɛˈwa/ < *deiwá
jæžin tuo /ˈi̯æʒin ˈtu̯o/ < *êǯį tû
ferškam /fǝrʃˈkam/ < *pʰarškáma
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Re: Wenetic Scratchpad- NP: Firstborn Daughter. Come say "aw

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Re: Wenetic Scratchpad- NP: Firstborn Daughter. Come say "aw

Post by hwhatting »

You sure about Slavonic (=Late Proto-Slavic?) so far West in 50 CE?

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Re: Wenetic Scratchpad- NP: Firstborn Daughter. Come say "aw

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Your weak verbs show that the Subjunctive has merged in the Present Passive. How does the language deal with this when a clause normally requires the subjunctive?
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Re: Wenetic Scratchpad- NP: Firstborn Daughter. Come say "aw

Post by Herr Dunkel »

Chagen wrote:Your weak verbs show that the Subjunctive has merged in the Present Passive. How does the language deal with this when a clause normally requires the subjunctive?
There are a septilliard languages that don't distinguish the active and subjunctive.
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Re: Wenetic Scratchpad- NP: Firstborn Daughter. Come say "aw

Post by Buran »

Have you thought about borrowings from neighbouring languages?

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Re: Wenetic Scratchpad- NP: Firstborn Daughter. Come say "aw

Post by Dewrad »

hwhatting wrote:You sure about Slavonic (=Late Proto-Slavic?) so far West in 50 CE?
Eeeeh. No, not really: I'm kind of going on the assumption that the Wielbark culture was Proto-Slavic speaking, but I could be wrong in this. PS being somewhat further east at this point doesn't really change much from the PW point of view, however.
Herr Dunkel wrote:
Chagen wrote:Your weak verbs show that the Subjunctive has merged in the Present Passive. How does the language deal with this when a clause normally requires the subjunctive?
There are a septilliard languages that don't distinguish the active and subjunctive.
This is correct. However, this is just a formatting error: I've linked to the wrong image for the Present Passive Subjunctive. It's been updated now, and should reflect the correct forms.
Adjective Recoil wrote:Have you thought about borrowings from neighbouring languages?
Extensively! I'm fairly solid on which languages will provide loans, and into which fields. However, I will confess that at this moment I have done almost zero work on actually producing vocabulary (so far, the only vocab created is that which you can see in the examples used in this thread.) I'm going to spend some quality time with my books and actually begin a lexicon for PW, probably somewhen over the weekend when I'm not otherwise engrossed in lesson planning.
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Re: Wenetic Scratchpad- NP: Firstborn Daughter. Come say "aw

Post by Dewrad »

To expand somewhat on the last point, it might be interesting to discuss some of the donor languages and the fields into which they end up donating.

Interlinguistic borrowing is, essentially, a cultural phenomenon. Languages (better, perhaps: speakers) don't borrow words at random. There's generally a reason behind the borrowing, and the top two reasons are probably prestige and unfamiliar concepts. The second case is readily observable: England doesn't encounter hurricanes or typhoons, when English speakers first encountered them, they borrowed the local words. In some cases, a native term can be replaced by a loanword because the concept denoted by the native term is distinct from that instantiated by the loan word: Celtic has a well-attested word for 'bridge' *briwā, which in Welsh has been replaced by a term borrowed from Latin pons. While familiar with bridges in a general sense, those built by the Romans were so different (engineered, made of stone) to native constructions that the Latin term was borrowed. In the first case, a high-prestige language might replace words in a low-prestige language with which it's in contact. English again provides (numerous) instructive examples, mainly in its stock of Norman borrowings replacing native Germanic words: why, for example, is a burger made from beef and not from cowflesh?

So, in the case of PW, which languages were the bearers of higher or more advanced culture? In common with Proto-Slavonic, the closest more "advanced" neighbour was Germanic: words for complex social structures would be borrowed, as would words denoting items of unfamiliar material culture. Greek was the language of missionaries bearing a new religion: words relating to concepts and structures central to that religion would be loaned (in this case possibly via Slavic, if the missionaries got to the Slavs first.) It is probable that at some point PW was in contact with Gaulish (via the Boii, most likely), a particularly "high" culture in comparison to PW: Gaulish would likewise contribute prestige words and concepts.

Trade with the north was mediated largely through the Balts, and so one would expect Baltic to contribute a number of words relating to trade and those items involved in trade. The major trading partner to the south, however, would have been the Roman empire: one would therefore expect a lot of Latin loans referring to trade goods (the expected outcome of PIE *wóyh₁nom would be PW **wáiną, instead one would perhaps find *wǐnu, loaned from Latin vīnum.)
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Re: Wenetic Scratchpad- NP: The redheaded stepchild.

Post by Dewrad »

Continuing with the daughterlangs, here's number two:

Insular

Insular (eeeh, let's say Hirsansk, from PW *pʰerčʰániška 'of an island') is closely related to the neighbouring Littoral varieties, sharing many of the same sound changes. As in the Littoral varieties, Insular Wenetic shifts the aspirates to voiceless fricatives: a futher change here is the shift of * > *φ > /h ~ x/. Similarly, the affricates become simple fricatives. However unlike Littoral, but in common with Riparian, the hushing sibilants/affricates become hissing, thus we find Insular sâs /saːs/ in contrast to Littoral šians /ʃi̯ãs/ (< PW *čʰą̂sa 'goose').

The interesting thing(s) about Insular? It has far more Germanic influence. This is particularly evident in the vocalic and accentual systems: initial stress and front rounded vowels, essentially.

We start off with similar changes to those found in Littoral Wenetic. Unstressed short vowels lax: i e become /ɪ/, u o become /ʊ/, a becomes /ǝ/ and the nasal vowels merge as a central nasalised vowel /ɨ̃/, which subsequently merges with /ɪ/ medially and /ǝ/ finally. The remaining nasal vowels merge with their long oral counterparts, so stressed PW *ą́ merges with *â and so on. Unstressed long vowels shorten. Stressed rising long vowels become rising diphthongs: î ê â û become i̯e i̯a i̯o i̯u. So far, so similar to Littoral. However, at this point the rising diphthongs become long vowels: eː æː œː yː. Then stress retracts universally to the initial syllable. Newly unstressed long vowels shorten, newly stressed short vowels lengthen in open syllables.

And then we've got similar syncope as found in Littoral, only slightly more thoroughgoing.

wæder /ˈwæːdǝr/ < *Wêdorā
westel /ˈweskla/ < *Wéstilā
wend /ˈwend/ < *wénida
wendisk /ˈwendisk/ < *wénidiška
uider /ˈyːder/ < *ûdra
sœl /ˈsœːl/ < *sâli
uidis /ˈyːdis/ < *ûdį̄si
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Re: Wenetic Scratchpad- NP: The redheaded stepchild.

Post by Dewrad »

OK, let's get back to the verbs.

Irregular Verbs

Until I derive and catalogue them, I have no idea whatsoever how many irregular verbs there are going to be, which is somewhat irritating. However, take heart, as most of the "irregularities" are basically just going to be quirky reflexes of previously regular forms, things like Latin's surface suppletion in tolo ~ latus.

The five main irregular verbs are those derived from PIE *h₁es- 'be', *bʰuhₓ[/i]- 'be', *h₁ey- 'go', *dʰeh₁- 'do' and *deh₃- 'give'. Suppletion only occurs in the paradigm of *h₁es-, with the past tense forms being supplied by *steh₂- 'stand'. It will be noted that the irregular verbs are defective in lacking passive forms: given the reflex of the PW passive in the daughter languages, it is not certain whether this situation obtained in the parent language, or if we are simply unable to reconstruct them.

Half because I can't be arsed, half because I don't plan to keep the PW passive as an actual passive in the daughters. Also, it's worth noting an interesting irregularity. The past stems are all retain reduplication to one degree or another: note the not-quite-Verner's Law reflex of *b rather than expected * in the paradigm of *pʰáuti.

Image
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Re: Wenetic Scratchpad- NP: Irregular Verbs

Post by Salmoneus »

Think you may have made a mistake regarding the Insular name for the Vistula...
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Re: Wenetic Scratchpad- NP: Irregular Verbs

Post by Dewrad »

Sal: thanks! Copy and paste is a fickle friend it seems.

Verbs are beginning to bore me. Let us get this done asap. We have only three main things to consider: non-finite forms, defective verbs and the periphrasis.

Non-finite forms

As I mentioned right back at the outset, the Proto-Wenetic verb has six non finite forms, which are in the main relatively straightforward.

The two present participles are formed on the present root of the verb. The present active participle is formally identical to the third person plural indicative, and inflects like a class two adjective. The present passive participle is formed on the present stem (thematic vowel -a- where relevant) by means of the suffix *-na for weak verbs and rhizotonic strong verbs, and *- for katalesiotonic strong verbs.

The two past participles are somewhat more complex. The past passive participle is formed on the past stem (the unstressed one in strong verbs), with one of two suffixes: either *-/-ta or *-/-ka. The distribution of the two forms is somewhat chaotic in PW: weak verbs only make use of the dental suffix, while strong verbs vary between the two with seemingly very little semantic motivation. The past active participle is simpler: strong verbs add the suffix *-ušá to the unstressed past stem, while weak verbs use the suffix *-wasa.

The two verbal nouns are typified by the suffixes *-dų́/- for the supine and *-dáwi/-tawi for the infinitive. Both suffixes are added to the past stem: the unstressed one in the case of strong verbs.

Clear?

Now we've dealt with non-finite forms, we can move on to the periphrasis!

Periphrasis

Only one periphrastic construction is securely reconstructable for Proto-Wenetic, and even then its exact use is under dispute. It consists of the supine governed by the irregular verb *tʰêtawi 'to do' (see, we can use infinitives now!). In Littoral and Riparian Wenetic, the descendant form indicates perfect aspect, while in Insular Wenetic it has entirely ousted the inherited past tense for most verbs.

Something to note here: the direct object in this construction (indeed, any construction involving supines) takes the genitive case, not the accusative:

*éǯą láidā pʰâtų tʰêmi 'I have recited the poem', not **éǯą láidą pʰâtų tʰêmi.

Finally, let's look at the...

...Defective verbs

This is a small class of verbs which are defective in that they only have a formal past tense, which is present in meaning. This group shares a common origin with Germanic's preterite-present (or modal) verbs in the statives of PIE. However, unlike Proto-Germanic, PW never innovated a new past tense for them. Happily, there are only nine of them, given below with their stressed and unstressed stems:

*wáid- wīd- 'know'
*tʰárš- tʰerš- 'dare'
*mán- min- 'recall'
*ânaǯ- ąǯ- 'suffice'
*áič- āǯ- 'own'
*tárp- terp- 'want'
*tʰáukʰ- tʰog- 'need'
*mákʰ- męg- 'be able'
*âd- ād- 'hate'
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Re: Wenetic Scratchpad- NP: Irregular Verbs

Post by hwhatting »

Most of the things in the last post are straightforward, and I like how you gave Wenetic a "cousin" to the Germanic weak verb construction. But one question:
Dewrad wrote:The past passive participle is formed on the past stem (the unstressed one in strong verbs), with one of two suffixes: either *-/-ta or *-/-ka.
Where does the velar past participle suffix come from? It's not something I'd remember seeing in any other IE language in a comparable role.

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Re: Wenetic Scratchpad- NP: Irregular Verbs

Post by Zju »

No l participle? That's too bad. ☹

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Re: Wenetic Scratchpad- NP: Irregular Verbs

Post by Dewrad »

hwhatting wrote:Most of the things in the last post are straightforward, and I like how you gave Wenetic a "cousin" to the Germanic weak verb construction. But one question:
Dewrad wrote:The past passive participle is formed on the past stem (the unstressed one in strong verbs), with one of two suffixes: either *-/-ta or *-/-ka.
Where does the velar past participle suffix come from? It's not something I'd remember seeing in any other IE language in a comparable role.
The PIE adjective-forming suffix *-ko, basically. A bit of a random choice, I admit, but if Balto-Slavic can use *-lo, why not?
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Re: Wenetic Scratchpad- NP: Irregular Verbs

Post by hwhatting »

Dewrad wrote:The PIE adjective-forming suffix *-ko, basically. A bit of a random choice, I admit, but if Balto-Slavic can use *-lo, why not?
Well, the us of *-lo in Slavic does not come totally out of the blue; see e.g. in this paper:
It is generally assumed that the l-participle derives diachronically from a group of Proto-Indo-European verbal adjectives ending in *-lo (cf. Damborský 1967). The adjectives signified likelihood to perform a certain action or referred to a characteristic feature of the person involved. The *-lo forms also served as a stem of nomina agentis (agent participles) and proper names in many Indo-European languages. Examples of such forms include discipulus ‘student’ or legulus ‘gatherer of fallen olives’ in Latin; dêlos ‘apparent, evident’ in Ancient Greek; bitil ‘applicant’, tribal ‘cattle driver’, or Unterläufel 'delegate’ in Old German. In Slavic they were often the base of pejorative agent participles, such krzykała ‘a shouter’ jąkała ‘stutter’ or guzdrała ‘dawdler’ in Polish (cf.
Wojtyła-Świerzowska 1974: 103ff).
AFAIK, OTOH, *-ko is mostly denominal, so less of a good candidate. But it's your party, anyay, so do as you like. ;-)

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Re: Wenetic Scratchpad- NP: Irregular Verbs

Post by Drydic »

*-l- was used as a participle ending in Lydian as well. And actually bled into the finite past paradigm as well.
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Re: Wenetic Scratchpad- NP: Irregular Verbs

Post by hwhatting »

Drydic wrote:*-l- was used as a participle ending in Lydian as well. And actually bled into the finite past paradigm as well.
I didn't know that - very interesting, another Slavic-Anatolian isogloss!

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Re: Wenetic Scratchpad- NP: Irregular Verbs

Post by Dewrad »

Hm! Thanks for all that information on the l-participle (particularly the article): very helpful. I had always assumed that it was simply imported from the nominal derivational system, so that was interesting. However, I think I'm going to keep by -ka participles, because they look cool and even in strict a post conlangs there's got to be at least some room for the rule of cool. However, I do think that incorporating the l-participle as well is too good an oppurtunity to pass up, and it fits seamlessly enough into the PW system.

Also, reading through the article gives me some interesting ideas on how it can be used, and how to combine the periphrasis (based on the Germanic weak verb preterite) with a Slavic-style participle + copula formation. One thing that bugs me a little at the moment is quite how Germanic PW's verbs are, and I think this would be a good way of forging a via media that also gives Wenetic a distinctive flavour. Therefore:

Aspect in Proto-Wenetic

The Proto-Wenetic verbal system distinguishes three aspects: perfective, imperfective and retrospective: the first is marked synthetically, while the latter two are marked by means of periphrastic constructions.

As it happens, another of my conlangs, Classical Tailancan, has a similar three-way aspectual distinction, so the descriptions below are modified from the grammar of that language.

The core aspectual contrast is between the imperfective and perfective. The perfective aspect is used when the speaker wishes to describe the action or event denoted by the verb as a simple whole, without reference to any distinct phases within that action. In essence, it views the action from the “outside”. The imperfective aspect, by contrast, indicates that the speaker wishes to emphasise that the action or event denoted by the verb has a complex internal structure: that it is made up of distinct phases of action, that it is a habitual, or ongoing action.

Frequently, this distinction can be seen as one of punctual versus iterative. For example, the verb šaušâtawi 'to sneeze' in the imperfective aspect šaušâtų dēdâ indicates 'he was sneezing, he sneezed over and over again', while the perfective šaušâti indicates a single, momentary action 'he sneezed'.

Similarly, the perfective is generally used for the bald facts of a narrative, while the the imperfective is used to describe concomitant actions or events:

*Néra eną́ derčą́ gáni čą sá suptų́ dēdâ.
hero-NOM DEF-ACC monster-ACC kill-PST.3SG while that sleep-SUP do-PST.3SG
The hero killed the monster while it was sleeping.

The retrospective aspect (also known as “perfect aspect”), is strictly speaking a combination of aspect and tense. A verb with retrospective aspect has no implications of internal temporal structure per se, rather it indicates that the action or situation is completed and of relevance to the deictic centre (the 'now') of the utterance. Consider the two examples below:

*Enâ kerpiškâ kʰubála émmi.
DEF-ACC.PL shoe-ACC.PL lose-RES be.PRS.1SG
I've lost my shoes.

*Enâ kerpiškâ kʰubáma.
DEF-ACC.PL shoe-ACC.PL lose-PST.1SG
I lost my shoes.

In the first example the verb has retrospective aspect, which implies that the loss of the shoes is somehow relevant to the present situation: the speaker could be looking for them, giving their loss as a reason for not going out, and so on. However, the verb in the second example has perfective aspect, which implies no such present relevance: perhaps the speaker has since found them.

From the above examples, you should be able to guess how the aspects are indicated. The simple inflected verb marks perfective aspect, while the periphrasis with the supine and *tʰêtawi marks imperfective aspect and retrospective aspect is marked by the l-participle and the copula.

This is a total change, I am aware, from what I posted above about the function of the periphrasis. I ummed and ah-ed about which way round the perfective-imperfective marking would go, as to me at least a "do-periphrasis" in English seems more naturally perfective. However, a similar construction in Cornish at least seems to be imperfective in meaning, so fuck it. It seems more natural that the perfective is the unmarked category to me anyway.
Some useful Dravian links: Grammar - Lexicon - Ask a Dravian
Salmoneus wrote:(NB Dewrad is behaving like an adult - a petty, sarcastic and uncharitable adult, admittedly, but none the less note the infinitely higher quality of flame)

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