Verbal morphology and aspect
We turn now to one of the more unique parts of Proto-‘Savanna’ grammar: namely, its verbal aspect system. In outline, aspect is expressed using two separate yet interlocking subsystems of verbal morphology. A system of
inflectional aspect signals perfectivity through stem change, while a separate system of
derivational aspect can be used for more complex variation. Together, they allow the speaker to indicate subtle distinctions in temporal setting and focus, something which more than makes up for the deficiencies of the small verb system and lack of conjunctions. A good understanding of both verbal aspect systems is vital for translating anything to or from Proto-‘Savanna’, or even just using the language idiomatically at all.
Inflectional aspect
First, let’s get one thing out of the way: calling this subsystem ‘inflectional’ is somewhat of a misnomer, especially if it is considered in opposition to the ‘derivational’ subsystem, which is also something of a misnomer. I call this one ‘inflectional’ partly due to its phonological form, but mostly because of the
aspect concord which exists in serial verb constructions for the inflectional subsystem, but not for the derivational subsystem. However, with regards to semantics the inflectional subsystem isn’t necessarily any less ‘derivational’ than the derivational one, if that makes sense. (Although then again, with regards to discourse there is a sense in which this is indeed true. See below.)
(So why call them ‘inflectional’ and ‘derivational’ at all? Because I needed to call it
something, that’s why!)
The inflectional aspect system basically indicates
perfectivity. That is, it signals the a distinction between imperfective and perfective aspect. In terms of
form, this is accomplished through root alternation (as already mentioned): all verbs have separate imperfective and perfective roots, neither of which can be predicted from the other. However, there are similarities between verbs, and we can identify a number of different patterns through which the perfective and imperfective roots are related:
- Identity: paatli~paatli ‘give’, qaathan~qaathan ‘fall’.
- Addition of a suffix -i to the PFV form: fawetl~fawetli ‘speak’ fas~fasi ‘stand’.
- Final vowel mutation: siwe~siwi ‘have’, lhiise~lhiisi ‘perceive’.
- Irregular change at the right edge: yusaa~yusaye ‘come’, qisa~qisni ‘cut’, phage~phaŋi ‘break’, gadiq~gadye ‘absorb’
- Synchronic suppletion: waq~mah ‘do’, tlaquf~lalef ‘come’.
Of these, most common are types 3 and 4. Type 2 is somewhat less common, and types 1 and 5 are very rare.
There are also a handful of
defective verbs with only one root — most prominently,
ndiyam ‘become’ exists only in perfective form. These are restricted to only one aspect, and cannot be used in the other aspect at all.
The
function of the imperfective/perfective distinction is perhaps more interesting. Generally speaking, we can say that the
imperfective aspect is used for events currently in progress, with some duration and/or internal structure, whereas the
perfective aspect is used for events in the past, which have been completed and have resulted in some change of state. (Though notably, the latter does not require telicity or boundedness, i.e. it does not have ‘Slavic-style’ aspect: see Ephraim’s posts
here and especially
here for more.) In practice, however, both aspects are more broadly applicable. The imperfective aspect has a wider range of use than the perfective, and can be considered the functionally unmarked aspect: it is commonly used for stative or habitual events, hypotheticals, imperatives, conditionals, and other speech acts which are not straightforwardly perfective.
When we start looking at individual verbs, however, this neat picture starts to fragment a bit. In particular, aspectual variation highlights a clear distinction between
active and
stative subsets of verbs. With the former, the imperfective/perfective distinction basically occurs with the semantics outlined above. However, when a stative verb is put into the perfective aspect, there is an additional implication of
inchoativity: that the subject is coming into the state. Thus, for instance, while
siwe means ‘have’, the corresponding perfective root
siwi means ‘take’, i.e. coming into the state of having something; similarly, while
lhiise is to ‘perceive’ something, if you
lhiisi it, you are instead beginning to see it. By contrast, for active verbs like
waq~
mah ‘do’,
gadiq~
gadye ‘absorb’ or
qefaa~
qefay ‘rise’, the single-word English gloss adequately covers both the imperfective and the perfective meaning.
Derivational aspect
We now come to the other aspectual subsystem, namely that of
derivational aspect. As with ‘inflectional aspect’, the name is somewhat misleading. Certainly it does have some application to verbal derivation: compare e.g.
gadiq~
gadye ‘absorb/ingest’ with
gadiqtsi ‘absorb in bits’,
gadyeŋu ‘absorb completely’,
gadiqŋu ‘have as a part’. But this is not always the case: in different contexts, these suffixes can cause little to no semantic change in the verb. In particular, they are heavily used to connect clauses in natural discourse (see below). This subsystem also has a number of formal properties more usually associated with inflectional than with derivational properties: its affixes are mutually exclusive, and usually they can appear with all verbs, or at least all verbs of a certain subclass.
In general, the derivational aspect suffixes act to alter the
temporal focus of the clause — that is, which part of the event do we want to highlight? In some cases, it can also indicate the
distribution of time — that is, when was the event being performed and when was there no event? Formally, the system consists of 5–8 suffixes, depending on how you want to count them:
| Imperfective | Perfective |
-tsi ‘iterative’
-ke ‘conative’
-ŋu ‘stative’
-li ‘continuative’ |
-tsi ‘iterative’
-ke ‘diminutive’
-ŋu ‘telic’
-me ‘ingressive’ |
As indicated by the table, the derivational aspect system does not operate entirely independently from the inflectional aspect system — but neither are they tied together particularly closely. While some suffixes may be used only with imperfective roots, or with perfective ones, others are available with both imperfective and perfective verb roots, with varying degrees of semantic difference between the two.
We will start by considering the
iterative -tsi. At a high level, this aspect indicates that the action in question took place repeatedly in some way. While the iterative may be used with both kinds of verb roots, it has somewhat different connotations depending on what kind of root it is applied to. With a perfective root, the resulting word can only refer to repetition on a single occasion:
qisni ‘cut’ →
qisnitsi ‘cut up’
phaŋi ‘break’ →
phaŋitsi ‘break into many pieces, crumble’
siwi ‘have/take’ →
siwitsi ‘take and take’
fasi ‘stand [up]’ →
fasitsi ‘keep on getting up’
However, with an imperfective root, the iterative is more ambiguous, and can also refer to repetition over numerous different occasions:
qisa ‘cut’ →
qisatsi ‘cut many times, chop’ or ‘cut often’
qaathan ‘fall’ →
qaathantsi ‘fall several times’'
phage ‘break’ →
phagetsi ‘break apart bit by bit’
Some verbs, especially stative ones, are rarely or never used in the imperfective iterative, purely due to semantic oddness:
siwitsi ?‘have on many different occasions’,
fastsi ?‘stand on many different occasions’. (Their perfective iterative forms are perfectly acceptable, though, as shown above.) Even some active verbs in the perfective iterative are fairly odd:
segegtsi ?‘die and die’.
The suffix
-ke is in some ways almost the opposite of the iterative. With perfective roots, it has a general
diminutive sense: it reduces the intensity of the action. It is particularly often used as a
semelfactive, to indicate an action done once only:
qisni ‘cut’ →
qisnike ‘cut once’
phaŋi ‘break’ →
phaŋike ‘crack open’
mah haŋuhaŋu ‘blow’ →
mahke haŋuhaŋu ‘blow one gust’
But it can just as often appear with meanings like ‘just’ or ‘merely’, or as a general marker of reduced intensity. This is especially prominent with verbs which are inherently durative:
fasi ‘stand up’ →
fasike ‘just stand up’
fawetli ‘speak’ →
fawetlike ‘speak a bit’
gadye ‘absorb, ingest’ →
gadyeke ‘eat a little’
-ke can also be used with imperfective roots, but with somewhat different semantics. In this case, it takes on a
conative role, expressing actions which have not been completed:
qisa ‘cut’ →
qisake ‘almost cut through’
segek ‘die’ →
segeke ‘almost die’ (note the morphophonology!)
lhiise meŋul ‘see’ →
lhiiseke meŋul ‘almost see’
[I’m not actually sure if ‘conative’ is the right word for this, but it doesn’t seem to have been used for anything else…]
The conative is also used with clause combining, to denote an action which occurred just as another action was finishing:
- Be
- 1s
- gadiq-ke
- absorb-CON
- tlaame,
- food
- qi
- 3s
- lhiise
- perceive
- meŋul
- eye
- bal.
- 1s
I had almost finished eating when he saw me.
The last suffix available to both perfective and imperfective roots is
-ŋu. As with
-ke, its perfective and imperfective usages have rather different semantics. With perfective verbs,
-ŋu has a basically
telic meaning: it emphasises that an action has an ending point, which is achieved at some point. This can lead to rather subtle changes in meaning, many of which have no straightforward English equivalent. Some examples which do:
fasi ‘stand’ →
fasiŋu ‘stand up’
waalhi ‘go’ →
waalhiŋu ‘reach, arrive’
ndisi ‘place’ →
ndisiŋu ‘set down’
mah kuwi ‘become ill’ →
mahŋu kuwi ‘fall ill’
However, perfective
-ŋu has a wider range of interpretations. It can also indicate that the action is totally completed, that the object of the clause is especially affected, or occasionally that the agent is particularly agentive:
segeg ‘die’ →
segegŋu ‘die stone dead’
ŋandi ‘deform’ →
ŋandiŋu ‘pull out, twist around, etc.’
siwi ‘have’ →
siwiŋu ‘grab all’
siwi lhibuq ‘know’ →
siwiŋu lhibuq ‘decide’
lhiisi meŋul ‘see’ →
lhiisiŋu meŋul ‘look’
As an extension of this, the telic can sometimes take on a perfect meaning, or even that of a simple past. The essential commonality is that it acts to focus on the ending point of an event.
Perfective
-ŋu is also heavily used in clause combining, where it indicates temporal sequencing:
- Be
- 1s
- ŋandi
- pull.PFV
- buthe
- honey
- thaŋ
- DEF.SG
- yusaye-ŋu,
- come.PFV-TEL
- be
- 1s
- gadiq
- absorb.IMPF
- tlaame
- food
- thaŋ.
- DEF.SG
I pulled out the honey, then ate it.
In the first clause here, note that the suffix could have just as well gone on the first verb
ŋandi, with little to no semantic change; in such cases it is most common to place
-ŋu on the last verb. We can also compare this to the corresponding sentence with imperfective
-ke:
- Be
- 1s
- ŋandu
- pull.IMPF
- buthe
- honey
- thaŋ
- DEF.SG
- yusaa-ke,
- come.IMPF-CON
- be
- 1s
- gadiq
- absorb.IMPF
- tlaame
- food
- thaŋ
- DEF.SG
I pulled out the honey, and ate it.
Both constructions represent temporal sequencing, but with different connotations:
-ŋu implies that the first action was completed, while
-ke does not.
As already mentioned,
-ŋu can also be used with imperfective roots. Here its distribution is more restricted: imperfective
-ŋu can be used only with active verbs. With these it acts as a
stative (or alternately
resultative) aspect, denoting the state which results after performing the action:
gadiq ’absorb, ingest’ →
gadiqŋu ‘have as a part’
qisa ‘cut’ →
qisaŋu ‘be in shreds’
qefaa ‘rise’ →
qefaaŋu ‘be elevated’
In addition to the three suffixes just covered, there are two more derivational aspects which are perfectivity-specific. Firstly, the
continuative -li is restricted to imperfective roots. This aspect has the effect of focussing on the event itself, while de-emphasising the event boundaries (beginning and end). The effect with standalone verbs is difficult to translate in English, but constructions like ‘keep on V’ or ‘V for a long time’ convey some of the meaning. In natural discourse, the continuative is however more often used to indicate simultaneity in clause combining:
- Baa
- 1p
- fawetl-li,
- speak.IMPF-CONT
- naaqa
- someone
- yusaye-ŋu
- come.PFV-TEL
- waalhi
- go
- bal.
- 1s
As we were talking, someone came up to me.
(Incidentally, this example has another instance of the telic aspect, again to emphasise the completedness of the action.)
Finally, the
ingressive -me is restricted to perfective roots; furthermore it is used only with active verbs. Simply put, the ingressive focusses on the starting point of an action, giving an inchoative sense for the resulting verb:
- Qi
- 3s
- yusaa-li
- come.IMPF-CONT
- be
- 1s
- waalhi-me
- go.PFV-INGR
- tsagif.
- running
As he approached I ran away.
As with some of the other aspectual suffixes, the ingressive has additional use in clause combining, in which it indicates that one event occurred before or near the start of another one. This is incidentally illustrated in the above example: the man approaching is coincident with my running away.
Aspect in clause-combining
For the most part, the uses of Proto-‘Savanna’ aspect in grammar and discourse are quite similarly to those of aspect in other languages. In this way both inflectional and derivational aspects are used to focus on different parts of the temporal setting of an event: the speaker can ‘zoom in’ on the beginning, middle or end of an event, or look at it as either a whole or a sequence of shorter events. Similarly aspect is used for derivation, as it allows an event to be constructed by slicing up other events in different ways. However, Proto-‘Savanna’ also uses aspect extensively in a third area: namely,
clause combining. Of course all languages have interactions between aspect and clause combining in some ways, for instance preferring perfective aspect for event sequencing, but Proto-‘Savanna’ is unusual in the extent to which this has become systematised.
The key idea to note here is that Proto-‘Savanna’ has a strong preference for
parataxis. It has few conjunctions, and few particles with conjunctive or disjunctive semantics; instead, clauses are simply placed next to each other. (This behaviour is cross-linguistically very common.) Often, aspect is the only indicator of the temporal relationship between clauses, and the derivational aspect system in particular has been co-opted to signal this relationship rather than temporal focus. As previously mentioned, this is especially common with the telic, continuative and ingressive aspects, but other aspects too are used in clause combining. Other usages may be (incompletely) listed:
- The iterative aspects can be used to denote two actions interspersed with each other, especially in SVCs
- The conative aspect may express an event interrupted by another
- The resultative aspect naturally gives the result of another action
And so on.
In natural discourse this tends to give some ‘separation of powers’ between the two aspectual subsystems. Inflectional aspect is used to give an outline of the temporal setting, as in other languages: event sequencing in the perfective, simultaneity in the imperfective, and so on. Derivational aspect then interacts with that to introduce extra expressivity: disambiguating temporal relationships, adjusting the nuances of events, altering the meanings of various verbs, etc. In this regard, the derivational aspect subsystem may be seen as having a more ‘derivational’ than ‘inflectional’ role role in discourse. Understanding this is essential to both understanding and speaking idiomatic Proto-‘Savanna’.
(I would have liked to do an analysed text to illustrate the principle, but it would take too long… maybe some other time.)
Note that it is important to distinguish between clause combining and serial verb constructions! Although some aspectual combinations may have similar semantics in both areas (as with the iterative), SVCs are more tightly bound and tend to have their own distinctive temporal interpretations. In particular, SVCs have
aspect concord, requiring all their verbs to agree in inflectional aspect; this in turn reduces their availability to variations in derivational aspect. The latter in SVCs is most commonly used for true semantic derivation rather than anything else.
