Quick Feature Focus - Constructions for "have to"
This Wednesday I published a Word of the Week post in which I, as I later realised, included the wrong construction for "I have to," so I thought I'd make a very quick post about these constructions.
While some constructions to do with performing tasks are just expressed using modal verbs (e.g. "Þúva gär þýremar" - I can do it), others use different constructions.
In particular, I want to pay attention to two similar constructions with similar meanings in this post, which are the two I mixed up in the WotW: the construction for "I have to" and the one for "I am supposed to."
You say "I have to do it" like this: "Aera/aeru/äëri gär þýremënin" (depending on the grammatical gender you use for yourself, from now on I'll just use the neuter and epicene "aeru" in the later examples). Let's deconstruct this sentence:
Aeru is the neuter form of "is" (Kolic doesn't conjugate based on grammatical person), gär means "I", so "aeru gär" means "I am." But what is that scary third wordform? Let's break it down into its parts: "þýmar" meaning "to do," the infix "re" meaning the direct object is "it," and the suffix "-ënin," which is the feminine comitative case marker.
How come we're applying cases to verbs? In Kolic, many verb conjugations actually mirror noun declensions, and can be easily analysed as declining the nominalised form of the verb. We nominalise verbs by taking the "-r" away from the infinitive, and since all infinitives end either in "-ar" or in "-ir," we end up with either the typical feminine suffix "-a," or the typical masculine suffix "-i." In this case, "þýmar" becomes "þýma," so it gets the feminine comitative suffix and becomes "þýmënin." Insert the direct object infix, and you get the final form, "þýremënin."
So the construction "I have to do ___" could be literally translated as "I am with doing ___." If you know about the Kolic possessive strategies, you might recognise this as identical to the Kolic sentence meaning "Doing ___ has me."
So this is how you say "I have to" in Kolic. Just say you are with the verb that expresses what you have to do.
What I used in the WotW, however, was a different construction: "Aeru þýremar rinin" (I didn't use this exact sentence but I'm showing this one for consistency's sake). Beware, because here, you don't change the word "aeru/a/i" based on your gender. Notice that "aeru" here doesn't form a pair with you, but with the verb in the infinitive, "þýremar." Since it's in the infinitive (so not nominalised,) it is always neuter.
So what does this construction mean? It means "I am supposed to do it." You'd say this specifically when you have to do something because you're tasked to do it. Let's break it down like the previous construction:
We already know the words "aeru" and "þýremar," they mean "is" and "to do it" respectively. The last word is just the comitative case of the first person singular pronoun, so it means "with me." So when you're tasked to do something, you say "To do it is with me." Notice that this is just the reverse of the previous construction: "I am with doing it."
You won't find this on my reference grammar site unfortunately, not yet. I am nowhere near getting to this part yet. I am way too busy with school to be working on my reference grammar. But I may find some time during the week? Who knows.
Lastly I'd like to remind anyone that reads this that everything I post on this blog is subject to change and may no longer be accurate, but once I actually get to finish my reference grammar, you'll be able to check there for up-to-date information on everything! Sorry for the wait but it's really a lot of work.
