17 July 2013

Auxiliary Verbs : Reduced to Disuse

Auxiliary verbs, as far as I understand them, are verbs that modify other verbs. In English, they are verbs like can, should, will, must, and so on. They change the meaning of the statement they are in to express things like possibility and intention. From the simple statement : I run. We get more complex statements like I can run, I will run and I should run. Syntactically, the subject comes first, then the auxiliary verb, then the main verb, and lastly the object if there is one.

In Eldawnian, auxiliary verbs will precede their subjects. One series of such verbs is the possibility family. Many of the abstract verbs have been classified by the qualities of the ether Spirits they are associated with, by the means of their opening vowel. Perhaps it will be clearer as I give examples. 'se' is a syllable I'm using to indicate movement and action. In combination with the abstract verb ending, it forms the possibility verb stem.

'seyo' : to make possible (can)
'aseyo' : to command/force (have to)
'oseyo' : to allow/permit (may)
'eseyo' : to be able/make ready (can)
'iseyo' : to compel/motivate (must)
'useyo' : to obligate (should/ought to)
'üseyo' : to decide/resolve (will/want to)

If I was to employ English syntax, I would simply construct sentences with auxiliary verbs as such : Subject - Auxiliary Verb - Verb - Object. I can run to Eleris would work out to 'ricos seto asüdiyo Elerirets'. I don't find this suitable for some reason, I'd like to maintain a strict SVO except for poetry, although I'm not much of a poet myself so it's unlikely that there'll be much Eldawnian verse.

It is now incumbent on me to introduce the noun 'vezhen'. It's a combination of the syllables 've' and 'zhe', which mean cause and effect respectively. Agglutinated, they mean the situation/circumstance. This word serves as the subject to the object of the possibility verb. The full formal sentence structure for something like I can run to Eleris would be 'vezhen seto ricos asüdiyo Elerirets'. Literally translated, this works out to something like The situation makes it possible for me to run to Eleris. Because of this, you could say that there are no auxiliary verbs as there are in English.

The main verb of the sentence becomes the possibility verb, and this can be in the three temporal tenses of past present and future. The second action verb of the sentence relating the object to the indirect object and will be in the infinitive conjugation. Well technically indirect object isn't the correct term... but I'd say it's acceptable since I'm making up my own grammatical structure. Then again I'm sure there must already be a formal name for what I'm trying to define... Oh who knows, I'm not Tolkien.

It is increasingly clear to me that the sentences we speak colloquially do not necessarily have to be complete to convey meaning. As such, I intend to reserve full sentences for indicating formality and politeness. I'll write a separate post on that, but the sentence could be reduced from 'vezhen seto ricos asüdiyo Elerirets' to 'seto cos asüdiyo Elerirets'.

Of course, the negative conjugations for the possibility verbs simply indicate that it is not possible, or not allowed and so on. When I introduce conjugations, it will be possible to construct sentences like I would help you, but I cannot. and so on. In fact it would probably be clearer than English because we have rather fuzzy, context sensitive meanings for words like may, would, could, should and will.

The reason why I have decided to remove auxiliary verbs is partly so I can remove the auxiliary copula as well. There is also no passive conjugation system for the verbs at the moment, nor am I inclined to introduce one. Verbs can, for now, remain as simple links between subjects and objects.

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