Triparic Word Order: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 18:00, 26 April 2016

Basic Sentence Structure

The structure of a simple declarative sentence (a statement rather than a question) is:

(SUBJECT) (FINITE VERB) [(NON-FINITE VERBS)] [(OBJECT AND MODIFIERS)]

The finite verb is the verb component which takes the personal ending. The non-finite verbs are other verbs (participles and infinitives) which convey meaning.

The object is the person or thing on which the verb acts. Modifiers are things like adverbs or prepositional phrases saying when, where, how, why, or for whom the action happened.

A particular sentence may not have any non-finite verbs, or any objects or modifiers; it could be as simple as Schann ðenket ("Shawn thinks").

Compound Verbs

In addition to the tense auxiliaries, there are specialized verbs known as modal verbs which specify the modality of the main verb: do you want to do the thing? Must you do the thing? Can you?

Additionally, there are verbs which can stand alone, or can be linked with other main verbs to give a more complex meaning. In English, these are called catenative verbs. An example would be I tried to help them. Another would be I plan to go to the concert.

And you could combine modals, the perfect tenses, the passive voice, and catenative verbs to create some very complicated ideas: They had been allowed to try to help him. They had not been able to plan to leave before Wednesday.

A challenge is to determine the correct order in which to state the non-finite verbs in a sentence. The way to think through the order is to start with the finite verb and ask questions, one by one:

"They had." Had what?
"Had been allowed." Had been allowed what?
"Had been allowed to try." Had been allowed to try what?
"Had been allowed to try to help."

Once you have worked out this order, you can put the non-finite verbs after the finite verb in that order.

Eng hadant gedurfet proben helfen erm. "They had been allowed to try to help him."

@@ Line 28: / Line 28: @@
 "Had been allowed to try ''to help.''"
-# Our components are '''eng''' (they), '''erm''' (him), and the verbs around them.  And we know that '''eng''' is the subject, so we know all of the sentence except the second slot the verbs).
+Once you have worked out this order, you can put the non-finite verbs after the finite verb in that order.
-#* '''Eng ... erm.'''
-# Since the sentence is going to be past perfect, the finite verb is, in particular, the 3rd person plural past of '''haben: hadant.'''
+'''Eng hadant gedurfet proben helfen erm.''' "They had been allowed to try to help him."
-#* '''Eng hadant ... erm.'''
-# Now we ask: "They had ''what?''" The immediate answer is "been required."  That is the past participle of '''musen'''.
-#* '''Eng hadant gemuset ... erm.'''
-# "They had been required ''what?''" "To try."
-#* '''Eng hadant gemuset proben ... erm.'''
-# "To try ''what?''" "To help."
-#* '''Eng hadant gemuset proben helfen erm.'''
 [[Category:Triparic language]]