Waikati verbs
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(and a few other things)
This public article was written by [Deactivated User], and last updated on 10 Oct 2014, 02:19.
[comments] hxs [This is an incomplete article.]
Waikati (hāxasi) verbs can be heavily inflected for mood, aspect, or tense, but have no person (unless the mood or aspect references a person). Because of this, some phrases that would be quite long in English can be a single word in Waikati, but the sentences are almost always ambiguous without context. An example:
I do not think it means what you think it means.
inɔāyaɔa
BELV-not-self.say.BELV-opposite
This means something like "Someone other than myself believes something is said, but the opposite is believed (by myself)." "ɔāya," "say," is used because Waikati has no verb for "to mean." "in" is an example of an inflection that references a person -- "someone other than myself believes." However, "ɔa," "believe the opposite," does not reference a person, and the "by myself" is understood through context.
Potentially adding to the ambiguity is the fact that these particles can actually be placed on either side of the verb:
inɔāyaɔa, ɔainɔāya, ɔāyaɔain, inɔaɔāya, ɔāyainɔa, ɔaɔāyain
These can all mean the same thing.
Fortunately, there are ways to mitigate this problem. In spoken Waikati, speakers may either pause briefly or epenthesize between the particle and verb or between two particles, if they feel their meaning isn't clear. The epenthetic sound could vary by speaker, but a normal epenthesis would be a glottal stop. In written Waikati, you can add a period:
in.ɔāya.ɔa, ɔa.in.ɔāya, ɔāya.ɔa.in, in.ɔa.ɔāya, ɔāya.in.ɔa, ɔa.ɔāya.in
This doesn't conflict with the end of a sentence in Waikati, since that is marked by a space followed by a colon:
in.ɔāya.ɔa :
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