LIMBAWA ... Chapter 1

Tense and Aspect

dono = to walk

donari = I walked

donarli = I was walking

donarwi = I used to walk

donarti = I had walked

donarla = I am walking

donarwa = I walk

donara = I have walked

Note ... There is no form donarta. You would expect donarta, but this has been "eroded" down to donara thru' much use.

Note ... The form donarwa is used if you habitually walk in the past, the present and there is no reason to suppose that you will not do so in the future. It doesn't imply that you are actually walking at the speech-act-time

donaru = I will walk

donarlu = I will be walking

donarwu = I will walk

donartu = I will have walked

Note ... The form donaru is used if the act of walking is just a one off ... for example in answer to the question "how are you going to the supermarket". But suppose that you had just moved house and the question "how will you get to the supermarket" is envisioning many instances of "walking" ... then the proper response would be donarwu.

donar = I walk

Note that in translating "I walk" from English you have a choice of donarwa or donar. Generally the "-RWA" form should be used if your possible walking time is interspersed with periods of non-walking. donarwa could be translated as "sometimes I walk, and sometimes I choose not to walk" or even "I usually walk".

Note ... if you say "I walk to church every Sunday" you have a choice of...

1) using donarwa and dropping the Limbawa equivalent to "every".

2) using donar and using the Limbawa equivalent to "every".

1) implies that you ONLY go on Sunday

2) leaves open the possibility that you go to church on other days of the week also.

The "-R" form is used to present general truths. For example, in says "birds fly", you would use the "-R" form.

So we have 12 different forms for tense and aspect.

LINGUISTIC JARGON ... tense basically means time and in my system we have past tense "I", present "A" and future "U" tenses.

... aspect in more difficult to explain ... but you can see from the examples, how the different aspects change how the verb relates to the rest of the text/sentence. In Limbawa, three aspects are included in the verb word. These are continuous "L" , habitual "W" and perfect "T".

Person and Number

donari = I walked

doniri = You walked

donori = He/She/It walked

donuri = They walked

doneri = You walked (this form is used when talking to more than one person)

donauri = We walked (this form is used when the person spoken to, is not included in the "we")

donairi = We walked (this form is used when the person spoken to, is included in the "we")

Note that the last form is used where in English you would use "you" or "one" (if you were a bit posh) ... as in "YOU do it like this", "ONE must do ONE'S best, mustn't one".

LINGUISTIC JARGON ... This pronoun is often called the "impersonal pronoun" or the "indefinite pronoun".

So we have 7 different forms for person and number.

Evidentiality

About a quarter of the words languages have, what is called "evidentiality" expressed in the verb. That is you can say (or you must say) on what evidence you are saying what you are saying. In Limbawa there are 3 evidentials which can optionally be added to the verb.

donori = He walked

donorin = They say he walked

donoria = I saw him walk

donoris = I guess he walked

The "A" form is only used with the past tense. We can call the the "IA" form.

LINGUISTIC JARGON ...These 3 evidential forms would usually be called the "reported", "seen" and "inferred" forms.

Pronouns

I	pas	we (includes "you")	yuas	me	pa	us	yua
		we	wias			us	wia
you	gis	you (plural)	jes	you	gi	you (plural)	je
he, she	nos	they	nus	him, her	no	them	nu
it	as	they	as	it	a	them	a

As seen above ... LIMBAWA has 2 cases : the ergative (-S) and the absolutive (- ). For citation, after a preposition or in copula clauses it is always the unmarked case that is used

Common prepositions

da ... at ne ... for

kaunu ... a coat

my coat	kaunapu
our coat ("our" includes "you")	kaunayu
our coat ("our excludes "you")	kaunawu
your coat	kaunigu
your coat (with "you" being plural)	kauneju
his/her coat	kaunonu
their coat	kaununu

na before a noun makes a genitive construction and the whole thing can be considered an adjective. For example kolo na kaunu ... the collar of the coat/the coat's collar. ni before a noun makes a genitive construction and the whole thing can be considered an adjective. However in this case the meaning is strictly "possession" and the noun must be human. When the noun is a pronoun we get a a special possessive form. For example NI PAni pa doesn't occur but we get pan

pan ... mine yuan ... ours wian ... ours gin ... yours jen ... yours non ... his/hers don ... theirs

Use the same pattern for demonstratives ? i.e. kaunu de ... that coat den ... that

dade ... there dai ... here