Otseqon verb morphology

Purpose
This document is mainly to allow the reader to parse the structure of Otseqon words. As such it is presently light on semantics. For more involved discussion of the meanings of various affixes, consult the upcoming Otseqon Grammar Dictionary.

Note on orthography
In most of this wiki the orthography used is more or less phonetic and designed to aid an English speaker in pronunciation, for example the palatalized allophones of /s/ and /ʦ/ are written 〈sh〉 and 〈ch〉, the uvular allophone of /k/ is written as 〈q〉, and intervocalically voiced plosives are written as such. Because this document deals with phonemes, the orthography used is a bit different and 1-to-1 reflects the phonology. Everything is identical to IPA except that 〈c〉 is used for /ʦ/ and 〈y〉 is used for /j/.

Verb stems
Otseqon morphemes are separated into three morphological classes: consonant-final, vowel-final, and N-final. Vowel-final morphemes are the most basic and their citation form is exactly the same as the stem form for morphological purposes. Consonant-final morphemes underlying end with a consonant, but due to a prohibition against word-final consonants have an echo vowel in the citation form, e.g. the stem hak surfaces as haka but is treated for most morphological purposes as though it ended with a k. N-final morphemes end with a syllabic N and are for most purposes treated identically to vowel-final stems, except that the final -N becomes -ri when an additional -N is suffixed, for example the word ken + the middle voice morpheme -N becomes kerin.

This is not just a property of roots but also of any suffixing morpheme.

Note that the stem of a verb is not entirely predictable from its citation form. All words that do not have identical last two vowels are vowel-final, but not all words with repeated vowels are consonant-final stems, e.g. /saka/ ‘’ is a vowel-final stem ending with -a, not a consonant-final stem ending with -k. In general, identical-vowel morphemes with a final syllable with a voiced onset are vowel-final, and a voiceless onset are usually consonant-final but are unpredictable.

Monosyllabic roots
Otseqon has a constraint on minimal phonological words, that they must be at least bimoraic. Roots that are a single light syllable have their vowel lengthened in citation form to fill this constraint. This long vowel goes away when additional morphemes are added. Some monosyllabic roots really are underlyingly heavy, in which case they maintain their long vowel when additional material is added to the word.

Tone
Morphemes are either toneless or high toned (H). Verb roots may also be downstepped high (!H). For a description of Otseqon tonal processes, see Otseqon phonology § Tonal phonology.

Aspect
Roots are unmarked for aspect by default and receive a habitual, characteristic interpretation, temporally non-specific and outside of the flow of events of the discussion. In order to receive an interpretation as a specific event they must be marked for aspect, perfective or imperfective.

Imperfective
Imperfective aspect is marked by reduplication of the root stem. The reduplication pattern is the full verb stem, sans tone, with any long vowels shortened. It is the stem that is reduplicated, not the full citation form, meaning that for consonant-final stems the echo vowel is not reduplicated unless needed to repair the syllable structure.

Examples:


 * sawa ⇒ sawasawa
 * tiice ⇒ tiicetice
 * kírí ⇒ kíríkiri
 * nii ⇒ niri
 * kas(a) ⇒ kaskasa
 * tak(a) ⇒ taktaka ⇒ tattaka
 * sap(a) ⇒ sapsapa ⇒ sapasapa

(NB. Note on (out-of-world) historical Otseqon development. The imperfective used to be a partial reduplication prefix, copying the first syllable. It's possible I'll go back to that, but I'm trying this out.)

Perfective
(This section is rather in flux and is historically one of the most volatile parts of Otseqon morphology (I change it almost every time I think about it). I think I'm finally reasonably happy with it though (I probably said that last time).)

Perfective is marked by a purely tonal H affix. The exact position of this tone depends on the tonal class of the root. On toneless roots, it surfaces on the second syllable (or the first syllable of a monosyllabic word) and spreads one syllable to the right, which is a general tonal process in Otseqon. On H tone roots the perfective tone aligns with the right edge of the word. Monosyllabic H toned words are homophonous between the perfective and the aspectually unmarked form. On two-syllable words, the perfective H tone fails to surface, but not before blocking spreading of the lexical H tone. The possible tonal patterns are given below. Note that underived Otseqon roots are generally two syllables and never longer than 3 and longer words are the result of affixation.

Toneless

Root	Perfective L	H LL	LH LLL	LHH LLLL	LHHL LLLLL	LHHLL

High toned

Root	Perfective H	H HH	HL HHL	HLH HHLL	HHLH HHLLL	HHLLH

Actionality derivations
These morphemes function to change the actionality class of the verb. The first two are affixes while the rest are auxiliaries.

Resultative -a
Attaches to ⟨P,ES⟩, ⟨M,ES⟩, or ⟨-,ES⟩ verbs and derives an ⟨S,S⟩ verb where the S is the state entered into by the original ES.

Due to vowel coalescing -a mostly ends up lengthening the final vowel.

This suffix has the allomorph -ha after long vowels and monosyllabic verb stems unless they end in /i/ in which case it is -ya by a regular process of epenthetic /y/ insertion.

Iterative reduplication
Applies to verbs of any actionality class other than ⟨S,S⟩ and derives an ⟨M,M⟩ verb where M is the repetition of the original P/EP/ES/Q.

Marked by full reduplication. Notably, the reduplicant must also satisfy the requirements of a full phonological word (i.e., be bimoraic) which means that short vowels in monosyllabic words surface as long in both the root and reduplicant.

Gradual in
Combines with ⟨S,ES⟩ or ⟨S,S|ES⟩ verbs to derive a ⟨P,EP⟩ predicate where P is the process of the original ES.

in is a verb meaning ‘to go’. It is often pronounced as nn, especially in this auxiliary usage.

Come
S,ES → P,ES where P = process of ES


 * what was this supposed to mean anyway
 * it's supposed to be the other way from go
 * i wish tatevosov had better distinguished from inceptive ES and ES as the limit of some P because im sure this has to do with that

Become
S,S → -(?),ES P,P → -(?),EP

Benefactive

 * Beneficiary
 * Possessor
 * Delegate
 * Source of verbs of removal or verbs like ‘keep X from Y’

Malefactive

 * Exactly the same as benefactive but casts the action as negatively affecting the applied object

Allative

 * Direction of motion
 * Psych stimulus
 * Target of speech act

Instrumental

 * Instruments
 * Perlative, prolative