Bùllyùḇùg

Compositions

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Bùllyùḇùg is a predominantly agglutinating, and is an inflectionally, derivationally, and syntactically head-final language of ergative/absolutive alignment. It features a noteworthy verbal complex involving a highly marked auxiliary verb with a comparatively unmarked main verb. The word order is fairly free, but there is a preference for Verb-Initial default.

Verbs

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The Verb Complex

[(modal)] [(future)] [auxiliary-agent-patient] [verb-(past)]
The verb phrase is made up of 4 parts. Firstly, there is a slot for any applicable modal particles. Following this is where the future tense particle goes, if applicable. Next is the obligatory auxverb, which agrees polypersonally with the agent and patient. Lastly is the verb itself, with past tense affix, if applicable.


golù inimaŋwa ȏgabȏŋ - "language is communal"

The Main Verb

The verb itself is very simple. It takes a suffix for the past tense and uses a preverbal particle to mark future tense. Besides these two alterations nothing else morphological is done to the verb.

The Auxverb

The auxverb is the location of most of the marking. The shape of the auxverb's root marks whether the verb is perfective or imperfective, with each form indicating different aspectual distinctions in those two categories. The auxverb can also hold up to two clitic personal arguments, which have case-marked forms. Standing alone, the auxverb can be taken as a kind of copula.

The Modals

The Realis mood is unmarked; and many varieties of Irrealis are marked with modals that precede future tense marker and the auxiliary. More than one can occur in a verbal phrase.

Nouns

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The Noun

Nouns and nouns phrases in Bùllyùḇùg mirror the morphology of verbs. The noun itself is left entirely bare, with the morphology being affixed to an article or determiner which precedes the noun. There is no morphological marking of number, you simply use the singular or plural articles, or a numeral.

Articles, Determinatives, and Correlatives

In Bùllyùḇùg, these are understood as a complex of similarly functioning analytic morphemes. They host the following information: grammatical number, definiteness, demonstrativity, quantification, grammatical case, and possession. They precede their nouns.

The Articles in Bùllyùḇùg are divided into several subtypes, beginning with:

the "classical" articles

of which each have demonstrative forms as follows

There are also the quantifiers

determiners

In addition, the article also bears the case marking, and this is especially common in relational clauses involving gerunds or participles. "you saw the frog from the swamp" ag(abl.def.sg) gawag o (abs.def.sg) wug gobdi boŋa

Adjectives and Adverbs

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The Adpositions

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ASPECT

Simple/Negative/Atelic

Perfect/Atelic/Discontuous Past

Inceptive/Terminative/Continuous

Habitual/Continuous

Durative

*the Durative allows for the auxverb’s arguments to be inherited from the first clause to the second.

MODALITY

Subjunctive

Conditional+Subjunctive

Conditional+Inferential

Optative/Counteroptative

Potentive/Dubitative

Optative/Counteroptative and Potentive/Dubitative, like the Durative, may appear with or without auxiliaries or verbs when the verbal constructions “agree” across clauses. in which case they are assumed to inherit any arguments, aspectual info, or tense from the context of a pre-established clause, as follows:

Imperative/Jussive

Imperative/Jussive can also appear as clauses within their own right, without auxiliaries, and even less commonly without their verbs.

Interrogative

Debitive

Necessitive

Debitive/Necessitive are similar to the previously described moods, the modals can stand alone if the arguments of the verbal constructions “agree” across two clauses, seen below:

Reflexives