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 «うん» ending, such as «あっくん», «かむん» etc
• Regular 2: verbs with the «いん» ending, such as «うりん», «きいん» etc
• Iregular: «すん», «すん» 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.

«ゆむん» (read) is a Regular1 verb:

• ゆむん<v><ind><pres> ↔ ゆむん
• ゆむん<v><ind><pres><neg> ↔ ゆまん
• ゆむん<v><ind><past> ↔ ゆまん
• ゆむん<v><ind><past><neg> ↔ ゆまんた
• ゆむん<v><int> ↔ ゆま
• ゆむん<v><imp><neg> ↔ ゆむな

Gerundization =

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

• ないん<v><ger> ↔ なやあ
• もおいん<v><ger> ↔ もおやあ
• かちゅん<v><ger> ↔ かやあ