Cenyani grammar reference

• Contents
• 1 Classes
• 2 Tenses and volition
  • 2.1 Tenses
  • 2.2 Volition
• 3 Inflection patterns
  • 3.1 Volition inflection
• 4 Moods
  • 4.1 Subjunctive
  • 4.2 Imperative

Modal auxiliary verbs and passive voice are both explained on the syntax page, as they are more of a syntactic feature than a grammatical one.

Adverbal prefixes on verbs are documented on the derivation page.

Classes

Every verb in Cenyani belongs to one of eight classes. The class of a verb is determined by the letter (or, technically, sound) that the verb ends in. The eight classes are almost identical in their inflection, with only minor differences between them. The classes are defined like so:

Class 1:

-c, -f, -y (consonant), -l, -n, -s, -š, -x;

Class 2:

-g, -rh, -v;

Class 3:

-b, -d, -ð, -p, -r, -t, -þ, -w, consonant cluster;

Class 4:

-m;

Class 5:

-ŋ;

Class 6:

syllabic consonant (-rr, -ss, -šš);

Class 7:

stressed vowel, diphthong, -h;

Class 8:

unstressed vowel.

Tenses and volition

While the Cenyani tenses may be very similar to English ones in many regards, the idea of volition is one that English completely lacks in grammar. Both of these concepts are explained below.

Tenses

Cenyani verbs are capable of expressing tense and, to an extent, aspect. Like English, Cenyani has a perfect tense, which marks that a (completed) action in the past continues to have relevance to the temporal reference point of the context. Temporal reference point in this case simply means past, present or future; unlike English, Cenyani makes no distinction between “has done”, “had done” and “will have done”.

Exactly what “relevance” the action continues to have up to the temporal reference point is largely context-dependent. In most cases, it simply means that the result of the action is still applicable or visible (to the speaker’s knowledge). Saying “I have closed the door” implies not only that you performed the task of closing the door in the (usually recent) past, but that the door is still closed.

Unlike English, the Cenyani perfect tense is not used to express that you have had a specific experience. What this essentially means is that an expression such as “I have driven a car” cannot mean “I have, in my lifetime, been in the driver’s seat of a moving vehicle”. In Cenyani, the equivalent phrase would rather be somewhat nonsensical, but would probably imply that the car is still where you parked it, or maybe that the engine is still hot, or something like that. Similarly, “I have eaten” never means “I know the taste of food”, but rather “I am not hungry right now”.

In any case, here are all the Cenyani tenses:

Present (pres.):

the action is currently ongoing.

Present continual (pres. cnt.):

the action is currently ongoing and is expected to continue for some time.

Present eternal (pres. et.):

the action is going on forever. This form is nowadays considered obsolete, but is sometimes found in older text. It is mostly a remnant of the time the cenya were more religious and believed many things to be eternal and unchanging.

Past (past):

expresses that an action took place in the past, and usually moves the temporal reference point to that time.

Perfect (perf.):

a past action has continued relevance in the temporal reference point of the context – “has/had done”.

Future (fut.):

the action will begin in the future.

Volition

This is a feature that English completely lacks, grammatically, so it will require a bit of explanation.

Cenyani verbs are able to express to some extent the intentions of the subject of the sentence (not the speaker) with regard to what he/she is doing. After experimenting with different ways of describing how this works in Cenyani, I decided that the easiest way is to simply list the four degrees of volition and give each one a more or less detailed description.

Neutral (=):

the most common degree of volition, neutral volition expresses, quite logically, neutrality. It expresses no agenda or intentionality in any direction; it’s purely declarative.

Positive (+):

without saying exactly what it is, positive volition does convey the idea that the subject is doing something with a strong intention or purpose. This form also often implies that the subject is happy about what he’s doing and does it willingly. It is in that regard similar to saying “I’m happily/gladly/willingly ‹verb›ing” in English.

Negative (-):

this is pretty much the polar opposite of the above; it expresses that the subject intended not to do what the verb says, intended to avoid it, but ended up doing it anyway. Similar to positive, it often implies a disliking in the subject, that he’s doing whatever it is he’s doing against his will or with great protest. It translates roughly to “I’m unwillingly ‹verb›ing” or “I’m ‹verb›ing and I really don’t want to”. It is sometimes (rarely) used to suggest the subject was forced by someone else.

Unintentional (~):

for verbs where the subject is an agent, it usually means the subject is doing something accidentally or is unaware of his/her/its actions, where the form is rare in the present tense; it is more common where English would use “I accidentally ‹verb›ed” or “I didn’t mean to ‹verb›”. For verbs where the subject is an experiencer – verbs that express a state rather than an action, such as “to sit” or “to be” – it more commonly expresses a state that just happened to arise; something that happened unintentionally. “I found myself sitting outside” would probably be expressed with the unintentional volition.

Volition does not indicate whether or not the action is/was actually carried out. For ways of negating clauses, see syntax. The parenthesised short forms may be used in other grammar documents; for example, ‘v~’ would refer to any verb in the unintentional volition form.

Of the four degrees, neutral and unintentional are the most common.

Inflection patterns

Be sure to have read the previous sections, so that you can understand what’s being discussed below.

There is one thing which I absolutely must explain. The present tenses require the stressed syllabic nucleus of the verb to be lengthened if the stressed nucleus is a short vowel in the infinitive. In inflection tables, suffixes which require this modification are marked with an acute accent (´) before the hyphen. For example, the verb aš (to see, look, watch) in present tense neutral volition becomes áši. If the stressed nucleus is ä, ö or a syllabic consonant, it cannot be lengthened in writing, and so it isn’t; in spoken language, however, it is lengthened in some dialects.

These suffixes are all for the neutral volition. Volition inflection is described below.

Basic verb inflection

	pres.	past	perf.	fut.
Class 1	´-i	-et	-te	-iv
Class 2			-de
Class 3			-ite
Class 4			-pe
Class 5			-ce
Class 6	´-ti	-tet	-tite	-civ
Class 7	´-þi		-te
Class 8	´-i	-net

The forms shown here, in addition to being only for the neutral volition, are the so-called basic verb forms. From these base tenses, present continual and present eternal can be derived:

• Present continual is the present tense form suffixed with a -v (e.g. áši becomes ášiv).
• Present eternal is exactly the same as above, but with r in place of v.

One final and crucial thing to note before I continue on to volition: in the present tense forms of class 8, the word-final vowel is replaced with the suffix. For example, ira (“to live, be alive”) becomes íri in present tense neutral volition, not *írai.

Volition inflection

Volition inflection is done with yet more suffixes, which get crammed in before the vowel of the tense suffix, right after the first consonant of the suffix, if any. There are two exceptions in the perfect tense: class 3 gets -‹vol›te, and class 6 gets -t‹vol›te, where ‹vol› represents the volition affix.

Historically, the perfect tense consisted of two suffixes, -t (perfect aspect) + -e (past tense, more or less), and the volition suffix ended up between the aspect and the tense suffix. Over time, the -t and -e merged into a single suffix, and the -t started changing according to the preceding sound. Hence the slight mess in current Cenyani.

Volition is marked by the following affixes:

• Neutral volition is unmarked, meaning no modification occurs.
• Positive volition is marked by -ar-.
• Negative volition is marked by -ul-.
• Unintentional volition, finally, is marked by -o- in classes 3 and 6 perfect tense, and -oy- elsewhere.

Below are four regular verbs in all indicative forms (thus excluding subjunctives and the imperative).

Moods

Cenyani verbs have three different moods which are, frankly, quite straightforward. The three moods are indicative, subjunctive and imperative. The indicative merely indicates that something is, was, has been or will be, without adding anything else to it; in a sense, it’s a moodless mood. The indicative is unmarked and is implied unless otherwise specified; it therefore requires no particular documentation here.

Subjunctive

The subjunctive mood expresses that an action or event is entirely and completely hypothetical; i.e. that it hasn’t actually happened, but it could happen or could have happened. It is most commonly used in if/then statements, but, just like in English, it would also be used in sentences such as “I wish I were ...” where the underlined word is in the subjunctive (since it is indeed a hypothetical scenario).

The subjunctive is created by applying the suffix -ol to the verb (after any eventual tense suffix), or simply -l if the verb already ends in a vowel or a syllabic consonant. It can be applied to the infinitive as well as to four of the tenses: present, past, perfect and future.

• Present and past subjunctive are used when talking about a scenario that there is a probability for, i.e. something that could happen. The present subjunctive is used, logically, in the present tense – when the temporal focus is in the present – whereas the past subjunctive is used in... well, in the past.
• Perfect subjunctive is used if, in the current temporal context (i.e. past or present), the hypothetical scenario being discussed has no probability of happening, i.e. if it could have happened.
• Future subjunctive is rather more rare, and is used if the hypothetical scenario has no probability of happening in the present, but might in fact happen at some point in the near or distant future.

Imperative

Whereas it may be seen as a bit rude in English to use the imperative for commands – that’s what it’s used for – there is no rudeness associated with it in Cenyani. In fact, using the imperative is more or less equivalent to saying “please”, though the precise interpretation does depend on the intonation and harshness with which the command is given. For example, hašase (the imperative of hašas = to make or become silent) can be taken to mean either “Please be quiet” or “Shut up!” depending on how it is spoken.

If the last consonant in the verb is a sibilant (s, š), the imperative is a simple -e, as in hašase above. If the verb ends in an unstressed vowel, the -e replaces it.

Otherwise, the imperative is -es on consonants and -s on vowel-final verbs.

The imperative cannot be mixed with any of the tenses; it must be applied to the infinitive.