Verbs
Verbs are used to describe actions or activities that happen. They are the central component of a sentence in Mi'gmaq and are made up of many different pieces of information. They contain enough information that they can represent a complete sentence, and are often the only element in a sentence. The verb shown below is composed of the parts shown and roughly corresponds to a full sentence in English.
| preverb | verb root | person & number | tense |
|---|---|---|---|
| poqju | angitelm | ag' | p |
| 'begin' | 'think' | I (1) > her/him(3) | PAST |
| 'I began to think about her/him' | |||
This section will discuss some parts of verbs.
Verb roots
Verbs in Mi'gmaq can describe events, comparable to verbs such as in English, and the qualities of nouns, comparable to adjectives in English. Verbs that describe events include nem- 'see' and gelus- 'speak' and verbs that describe nouns include maqtaw- 'black' and ewe'g'- 'loose'. For more information see Verb stems. [Let's add more information about initials, medials & finals as we go along]
But verb roots cannot stand on their own. They minimally need to show information about the subject, and if relevant, the object.
Animacy & transitivity
For more detail, see Nouns or Animacy
Animacy is a classification of the status of a noun as animate or inanimate. This classification is often related to whether the noun is alive (animate), such as humans and animals, or not alive (inanimate), such as a chair and a table. But sometimes there may not be an obvious connection between the meaning of the noun and whether it is animate or inanimate. For example, containers tend to be animate, and some foods and items of clothing are animate (such as gmu'jmin 'raspberry') while others are inanimate (such as aloqoman 'grape'). This is similar to gender in other languages, such as in French, un couteau 'a knife' is masculine and la cuillère 'the spoon' is feminine.
Transitivity refers to how many people, things, or groups need to be involved in the action of the verb. If the verb only has a subject, we call it intransitive, and if it has both a subject and an object, we call it transitive.
Both animacy and transitivity are important and result in a 4 way classification of verbs: intransitive verbs with an animate subject [VAI], intransitive verbs with an inanimate subject [VII}, transitive verbs with an animate subject and object [VTA], and transitive verbs with an animate subject and an inanimate object [VTI]. Verbs within each classification have different forms to encode information. Please refer to the specific pages for each classification for the details of each.
| Intransitive | Transitive | |
|---|---|---|
| Animate | VAI | VTA |
| Inanimate | VII | VTI |
Depending on which classification the verb has, person and number marking will differ.
Person & number
For more detail, see Nouns
Person and number distinctions refer to the specific characteristics of the subject and, if present, the object. Person refers to the relationship of the people involved, the speaker, 1st person, the listener, 2nd person, or another, 3rd person. But not only animate persons are referred to, as inanimate things, 0 person, can also be referred to.
An additional distinction, shared by many Algonquian languages, is a distinction between a 3rd person, i.e. John, and a 4th person, i.e. John's brother, who is an additional 3rd person in the sentence (or even in the conversation). For more information see Obviation.
| person | term | gloss |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | first person | 'I/me' |
| 2 | second person | 'you' |
| 3 | third person (animate) | 'she/her' 'he/him' 'it' |
| 4 | fourth person | 'her daughter' |
| 0 | third person (inanimate) | 'it' |
In addition, the number of people involved is also important, such as singular, a single person, or plural, 2 or more people. Mi'gmaq makes an additional distinction between dual, 2 people, and plural, 3 or more people. As well, with 1st person plural 'we', Mi'gmaq makes a distinction between whether the dual and plural involve 1st person and the 2nd person, called inclusive, or the 1st person and a 3rd person, called the exclusive.
Below is a summary of the full list of distinctions made. For more information see Person & Number marking.
| person | singular | dual | plural | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 13 | I | we (me & another) | we (me & others) |
| 12 | we (me & you) | we (me & you-all), (me, you & another/others) | ||
| 2 | you | you-all | you-all | |
| 3 | s/he | they (animate) | they (animate) | |
| 0 | it | they (inanimate) | they (inanimate) | |
Mood
Also known as Mode. For more detail, see Mood
'Mode describes the speaker's attitude toward a situation, including the speaker's belief in its reality, or likelihood.' (Payne, 1997; 244) In each class, there are a variety of different mode's which can be expressed. Most can be expressed in different tenses and in the affirmative or the negative. Below is a table, based on Pacifique's grammar (as translated in Lesson 10 in Hewson & Francis (1990), although ), that summarizes these observations using the first conjugation of VAI (intransitive verb with animate subject) with third person subject agreement.
| mode | teluis- 'name' | gloss |
|---|---|---|
| Indicative | teluis-in | 'Your name is...' |
| Imperative | tluis-i | 'Be so named' |
| 'When...' (Subjunctive) | teluis-inl/-ineg | 'when your name is...' |
| 'If...' (Subjunctive) | tluis-in | 'if your name is...' |
| Conditional | teluis-igg | 'Your name would be...' |
| Subordinative | g-tluis-in | 'that your name is...' |
Tense
For more detail, see Tense
A sentence can refer to a time period which is the same or different from the time when it was spoken. This is called tense and this is often marked on verbs as an ending (suffix). In Mi'gmaq, verbs can be expressed in present, past, and future. Aspect marking is similar to tense, i.e. imperfective, but is usually done with preverbs; for more detail see Aspect. Generally, present is the default and not marked. Past is often marked with -p, as shown in below, but this is not always the case. This -p(n) is also argued to mark evidentiality as well [come in Jenny!]. Future tense is often marked with a vowel reduction in the verb stem, as shown below.
| tense | teluis- 'name' | gloss |
|---|---|---|
| present | teluis-it | 'her/his name is...' |
| past | teluis-iss/-i(s)p | 'her/his name was...' |
| future | tluis-itew | 'her/his name will be...' |
Negation
For more detail, see Negation
Verb forms can be negated with the addition of a negative particle mu, or ma in the future. Verbs that are followed by this negative particle must have negative marking, -w or -u. We can see this contrast from the Mode table above, where mu teluis-ig 'her/his name is...' is negated with the addition of the negative particle "mu" and the "w" negative marker in mu teluis-iwg 'her/his name isn't...'
Preverbs
For more detail, see Preverbs
A preverb is an element found at the left edge of a verb in Mi'gmaq that modifies the meaning of the root and any other preverbs to the right of it. Some of the meanings that are expressed in Mi'gmaq using preverbs are expressed in other languages such as English as adverbs (e.g. jaqal- "quickly, energetically"), prepositions (e.g. toqjuw- "up"), modal verbs (e.g. getu- "want (to)"), prefixes (e.g. minu- "re-"), other verbs (e.g. poqju- "begin (to)"), and other expressions (e.g. etl- "in the process of, be __ing"), although not all elements that belong to one of these categories in English are expressed as preverbs in Mi'gmaq, such as igtug "at, near (location)," which is found after nouns, not before verbs. Some examples of preverbs are found below (the preverb part is in bold)
'''poqju'''-wissugwatma-p '''begin'''-cook.3sg.anim.3sg.inan-past
's/he is beginning to cook it '
'''newti'''-wissugwatma-p '''one'''-cook.3sg.anim.3sg.inan-past
's/he cooks it alone (slot 2)'
'''getu- poqju- mamuni- espi- inn-ui'''- sit '''want- start- high,very- level- people-lang''' -3sg
's/he wants to start to speak the people's language (Mi'gmaq) at a very high level'
(sample context: said of an enthusiastic student of Mi'gmaq)
To Do
- Make collapsible table templates for verb paradigms. Instructions are linked to on the Style Guide, under unresolved issues for now.
- Put a giant complex verb at the beginning and break it down into sections: (preverbs) - stem - finals - (negation) - person/number - (tense) - (3rdPL/obviative)
- Collapse Mood section by taking out non-present tense forms (those will go in tense section). Use 2nd person subject to make imperative forms more intuitive.