Hello everyone

In my last post, I talked about the grammar of nouns and pronouns in my conlang te munwa lengwa. This conlang is an auxiliary language based on english, spanish, hindi and mandarin. As announced last time, this will be the next installment of a series of posts detailing the grammar of te munwa lengwa. This post will focus on verbal grammar and how to form simple sentences.

Copula Verbs

Copula verbs in te munwa lengwa that can be used to connect a noun with its predicative, which can be a noun phrase, adjective or a prepositional phrase. The most important copula verb is "xi" to be. In such a sentence, the noun, copula verb and predicative can appear in any order as long as the verb is in between the noun and predicative. So if you look at the example

te tare xi roho

"the tower is red"

the phrase "te tare" and "roho" could also be switched.

Sentence Structure

The different arguments in a sentence appear in the order of Subject - Verb - Object. Subject and object are not marked grammatically, so the word order is the only way to tell them apart. So in the sentence

mo kan te klok

"I look at the clock"

"mo" has to be the subject and "te klok" has to be the object.

Ditransitive Verbs

Some verbs in te munwa lengwa can take an indirect object in addition to a direct one. The indirect object comes directly after the verb and therefore precedes the direct object. The ditransitive verb "gide" for example could form a sentence like this:

mo gide tu e kap

"I give you a cup"

Tense and Aspect

In te munwa lengwa there are three tenses; past, present and future, as well as a distinction between perfective and imperfective aspect, which is only applied to the past tense though. The present tense is always unmarked. The future tense is marked with the auxiliary verb "canda" (which also means "to go" if it is used on its own), whereas past perfective is marked with "kempet" ("to finish") and past imperfective with "remein" ("to stay"). All these auxiliaries precede the verbs they modify.

The past perfective refers to actions that were completed.

(1) mo kempet youyung en te oter kosta

"I swam to the other shore"

The past imperfective can refer to actions that happened repeatedly/habitually, like in the sentence:

(2) en meite monyan mo remein youyung

"Every morning, I used to swim"

or to actions in the past, that are ongoing

(3) mo tetyem remein youyung

"I was swimming at that time"

or actions that have not been completed in the past

(4) mo remein youyung, wan ki enimen kempet xwo te de mo nam

"I was swimming, when somebody said my name"

Imperatives

Imperatives can be formed by omitting the subject of a verb phrase. For example:

naura youyung en te kosta!

"swim to the shore now!"

Modal Verbs

Modal verbs like "neng" - can, or "xuyau" - want, can be inserted before the main verb and after the tense/aspect auxiliaries. F.e.

mo no remein neng diskuber te hagar

"I couldn't find the house"

Causative Verbs

Causative verbs like "xuyau" - want or "permeti" - allow, can take a verb phrase as an object. The subject of the causative verb causes the action of the verb phrase. This might look something like this:

(1) mo xuyau tu xinren mo

"I want you to trust me"

here "tu xinren mo" is the verb phrase, which can be seen as the object of "mo xuyau".

Negation

The particle "no" is used to negate verbs. It precedes any auxiliary or modal verb before a main verb.

Nominalization

Verbs can be nominalized by adding an article (f.e. "te youyung" - swimming)

Passives

Passives can be formed by adding "xi" - to be, as an auxiliary before a main verb. This means that "xi" can be preceded by modal verbs, other auxiliaries or the negation particle. The agent of the verb can optionally be marked with the preposition "bei" F.e.

tete hagar kempet xi keri (bei enimen)

"This house was bought (by someone)"

Questions

As in english, yes/no-questions are formed by changing the word order from SVO to VSO. F.e.

lib tu en tete tare?

"Do you live in this tower?"