Jéyûng is an agglutinative language, which means that the verb is affixed many different morphemes indicating things like tense, mood, aspect, etc.
These morphemes take the shape of suffixes, which stick to the verb in a set order. Since the verb agrees with its subject in person and number, personal pronouns have taken the role of the imperative mood: using a subjet personnal pronoun always adds a modal (injunction, order, advice) nuance to the process of the verb.
This article aims to introduce the verbal morphology of Jéyûng. The suffixes are presented in the order they appear relative to the verbal root.
In general, this is the order of the suffixes:
ROOT-THEME-TENSE-(ASPECT)-MOOD-PERSON
The verbal root is the lexical element of the verb, it typically cannot be used on its own. To appear in speech, it needs to be appended a vocal theme. This theme is represented by a single vowel, making it a phonotactically viable word. This vowel is determined by the syntactic context of the verb: if the verb is used transitively, the theme is -û, if the verb is used intransitively, the theme is -ö.
Jéyûng distinguishes three tenses: past, present, and future. While the present suffix might be omitted in unambiguous contexts, it is still mandatory in many contexts such as storytelling, be it oral or written. The different tense suffixes are described in the table bellow
| Past | Present | Future |
|---|---|---|
| -zé | -pa / -ø | -jû |
The primary use of aspect in Jéyûng is to place events happening in the same tense relatively to one another. It distinguishes 3 tenses: accomplished, inaccomplished and iterative. Aspect is not always necessary and therefore constitutes the only contingent verbal paradigm in Jéyûng.
The use of a verb with an accomplished/inaccomplished aspect marker can only appear in tandem with at least one other verb similarily marked and in the same tense. The iterative aspect is the only aspect that can appear "in a vacuum" and is similar in its use to english's presente perfect.
The aspect suffixes are described in the table bellow.
| Accomplished | Inaccomplished | Iterative |
|---|---|---|
| -ra | -üö / -ø | -mo |
The mood brings a condition/nuance to the realization of the process of the verb. While the modal suffix can be omitted, the context always affects the mood of the verb. There are 2 moods that are expressed using suffixes: volitive (wanting to do smth) and debitive (having to do smth).
The volitive is expressed with -to and debitive with -rè.
Mood may be expressed in a variety of ways in Jéyûng. Earlier, we mentionned the modal use of the subject pronoun but many verbs, adverbs, etc. might be used to affect mood to the verb. Since this article is dedicated to morphological suffixes, we won't go into the details of these different ways to assign mood.
The verb agrees with the subject in both person and number. The table bellow describes the different person suffixes.
| Singular | Plural | |
|---|---|---|
| 1st person | -zè | -zö |
| 2nd person | -ngè | -ngö |
| 3rd person | -bè | -bö |