Unit 3: Verbs & Verb Phrases 

The goal of Unit 3 is to research the structure of the verb and the verb phrase. This includes identifying inflectional and derivational morphemes that affix to verbs, their underlying forms and their phonologically-conditioned allomorphs. 

Verb research can clear up various orthography questions and help ensure that there is adequate distinction between verb conjugations. For example, in a workshop on Mengisa-njɔ́wi, the work group recognized the importance of writing grammatical tone when it was revealed that many of the language’s TAM distinctions are indicated only by tonal melody. A different workshop team studying Maꞌdi Urule discovered that the language uses vowel length to distinguish between perfective and imperfective aspect. This finding clarified that long vowels would need to be marked in the orthography, since they encode grammatical information. 

In general, work teams often find Unit 3 to be the most helpful unit for deciding word boundaries. 

Overview: Unit 3

Unit 3 Goals: 

(1) Research verbs, including…

• • • Transitivity

    • TAM distinctions

    • Conjugations

    • Derivations

(2) Make initial decisions on...

• How to write inflected verb forms 

• Where to mark word boundaries within the VP

Estimated Time: 

2 weeks

Outputs 

Possible outputs of Unit 3 include...

• Verb paradigms

• A list of derivational morphemes

• An updated lexicon

• A draft of example sentences for the alphabet book

• Short stories

Preparing for Unit 3

In preparation for Unit 3, the workshop leader and linguistic facilitators should read any available literature describing the verbal system of the language under research and other related languages. Of particular interest are the inflectional systems and categories for verbal derivations. Other important items to note are precedents (and/or inconsistencies) for marking word boundaries and writing verbal affixes. 

Facilitators should also use the verbs collected during the transcription activity (q.v. Unit 1: Data Collection) to do an initial analysis of the language’s verbs, particularly in terms of derivational morphology. When this initial analysis is complete, approximately 50 verbs should be selected for more in-depth study during Unit 3. 

Language & Context Considerations

Verbal systems vary widely from language to language. Some languages have numerous tenses while others are primarily aspect-based. Languages also differ in their number of productive verbal derivations - a language may have few (if any) verbal extension or many. Moreover, not all languages have strict classes in terms of transitivity and tone (Chadic languages, for example). Background research on the language and its language family will enable the workshop leader to tailor Unit 3 activities so as to help the team discover features that are present in the language and avoid looking for ones that are not. 

Unit 3 Content: