Okinawan/Grammar

Basic verbal morphology

Verbs in Okinawan should be tagged <v>. Note that because the difference between present and future in Okinawan is strictly contextual, tags that refer to the "present" actually refer to the "non-past". Furthermore, verbs have three major classes:

• Regular 1: verbs with the «un» ending, such as «akkun», «kamun» etc
• Regular 2: verbs with the «in» ending, such as «urin», «kiin» etc
• Iregular: «sun», «sun» etc

Verbs have three tenses/inflections: Indicative, Intentional, and Imperative. These are represented by the tags <pri>, <int>, and <imp>. Additionally, Indicative verbs can be tagged as either past <pri> or non-past <pres>. Finally, any of these other than the Intentional can be negated using the <neg> tag.

«yumun» (read) is a Regular1 verb:

• yumun<v><ind><pres> ↔ yumun
• yumun<v><ind><pres><neg> ↔ yuman
• yumun<v><ind><past> ↔ yuman
• yumun<v><ind><past><neg> ↔ yumantan
• yumun<v><int> ↔ yuma
• yumun<v><imp><neg> ↔ yumuna

Gerundization

Verbs can be made into nouns by affixing «yaa» to the verb stem. To represent this, the <ger> tag is used.

• nain<v><ger> ↔ nayaa
• mooin<v><ger> ↔ mooyaa
• kachun<v><ger> ↔ kayaa