Kjaxono verbs

Due to its complexity and widespread irregularities, unique words to describe unusual concepts in regards to conjugation, and concepts with little if any equivelant in any other natural language, verbs in Kjaxono often pose a mammoth stonewall to learners of the language. This article presupposes familiarity at least with Kjaxono grammar.

Scales and subscales

When talking about Kjaxono, unique terminology is often employed when referring to its verbal system: the two most important are scales and subscales. These roughly correspond to ordinary conjugations in other languages, but scales and subscales distinguish themselves from other language's conjugation systems in several ways. For example, some scales may imply seperate inoformation of which in an ordinary language's conjugation would have to be conjugated in addition. Another difference is the manner of which Kjaxono verbs conjugate, which is also significantly different from other languages.

In the Cjaingi Omacili, scales (Gqabakjoŋ /ɢa.'ba.kʲoŋ/ in Kjaxono) and subscales (Kangakjoŋ /ka.ɴa.kʲoŋ/) are described as so:

"[...] it [Scales] [is] the system in verbs in which we classify, organize, and differentiate between the verbs in which take objects and not, to ensure that [subscales] see the lines and draw correctly in their wake [...]" (Page 291-292)

In Kjaxono, two types of scales are used: the transitive and intransitive. The transitive scale is used primarily for transitive verbs, aswell as with volitive verbs. The intransitive scale, meanwhile, is used for intransitive verbs and involitive verbs. Translated from the Cjaingi Omacili, the two scales in Kjaxono translate as the Objective scale, and Non-objective (or anti-objective) scale respectively. The objective scale and non-objective scale are what these are referred to by most linguists in Xjetjeŋ. The three subscales within are called the northern (qahaż), eastern (iemaqaż), and western (eameqeż) subscales. The northern subscale refers to verbs of any scale that start with front vowels, the eastern subscale refers to verbs of any scale that start with back vowels, and the western subscale refers to verbs that starts with consonants.

Overview

Kjaxono verbs are usually constructed agglutinatively, though they show many fusional features.

The imperative mood has two seperate submoods: the hard and soft. Typically, the hard imperative is used by people of higher social classes to people of lower social status (an example being an employer to an employee), by parents to children, etc. The soft imperative is used far more commonly, and acts as a more polite and formal version of the latter. Person marking in verbs can also specify the nature of definiteness in the pronoun. This feature - sometimes termed verbal personal definiteness - has little if any equivelance in any other natural language.

The perfect tense has 5 different forms, of which are conveyed via the preverb slot of Kjaxono's verb template. The individual perfect subtenses are sometimes considered tenses by themselves, but they do not vary morphologically except in the preverb.

• Person
  • Indefinite
  • Definite
• Tense
  • Past
  • Hodiernal
  • Present
  • Perfect
    • Continuative perfect
    • Anterior perfect
    • Universal perfect
    • Recent perfect
  • Future
• Mood
  • Indicative
  • Conditional
  • Potential
  • Hypothetical
  • Imperative
    • Hard
    • Soft
• Evidentiality
  • Direct
  • Reportative
  • Assumptive
• Voice
  • Active
  • Middle
  • Passive
• Aspect
  • Perfective
  • Momentane
  • Prospective
  • Imperfective
  • Progressive
  • Stative
  • Gnomic

Verb structure

Kjaxono uses a variety of prefixes and suffixes to conjugate verbs. The following chart shows the maximum amount of affixes and alterations a verb in Kjaxono can take in their usual order. Note that in everyday speech, most Kjaxono verbs do not take the amount of forms that the table may suggest.

Kjaxono verb template

PrV		TmpD				E	STEM	At²		V	(PsV)
Preverb		Tense	Mood	Person		Evidentiality		Aspect	Tense	Voice	Postverb
(Locative type)	(Tense)			Definiteness	Indefiniteness						Misc.	(Evidentality)
1a	1b	2a	2	2b	2c	3	4	5a	5b	6	7a	7b

One will notice the prevelant double marking that Kjaxono verbs conjugate for.

In Kjaxono, preverbs serve many functions. In some subscales they are used to differentiate between different tenses (most notably each of the perfect tenses) but they serve other uses as well. The existance of post-verbs universally is highly debated, but they are a prevelant feature of the [...] dialect, and are beginning to be used in mainstream dialects. In most dialects, preverbs only conjugate for the perfect, past, and nonpast tenses; in the hodiernal and present tenses the preverb is usually simply absent.

Transitive scale (Objective scale)

Northern objective scale

For this section, the verb stem used is " aqaǔŋ" [aqa.'u:ŋ]; to bring.

Preverb

Perfect tenses				Past	Nonpast
Continuative perfect	Anterior perfect	Universal perfect	Recent perfect
n(ǔ)-	e(ǔ)-	p(ǔ)-	b(ǔ)-	e(i)-	n-

Tense and Mood prefixes

Tense		Mood		Singular				Plural				"Indefinite" Marker
				1st	2nd	3rd		1st	2nd	3rd
Past	i-	Indicative		sj(e)-	c(e)-	kj(e)-		s(e)-	cj(e)-	k(e)-		o-
Hodiernal	ǔ-	Conditional		x(e)-	ŋ(e)-			xj(e)-	ŋj(e)-
Present	N/A	Potential		q(e)-		tj(e)-		l(e)-		t(e)-
Perfect	ǔ-	Hypothetical		h(i)	hŋ(i)-	mq(i)-			ŋj(u)-	mj(i)-
Future	e-	Imperative	Hard	N/A	ż(o)-			N/A	qż(o)-
Prefixed onto the T&M prefix			Soft		c(o)-				qac(o)-

In addition, all tenses excluding the present triggers vowel gradation, turning the final vowel into /a/.

Evidentiality prefixes

Direct	-(e)t-
Reportative	-(e)d-
Assumptive	-(e)ng-