User:Tezero/Tempspace2

Grammar
Navajo is a language based first and foremost around its verbs. Generally, a Navajo verb will convey most of the information of its host sentence, using affixes to express a variety of categories. Its morphology is highly synthetic: its nouns contain an average of four to five morphemes, while its verbs contain an average of eleven. There is great deal of irregular fusion at morpheme boundaries and frequent use of null affixes, making Navajo less cleanly agglutinative and more fusional than many other native languages of the Americas.

In terms of basic word order, Navajo is usually classified as a subject–object–verb language. However, nouns are also not marked for case. In situations when the subject and object of a transitive verb would receive an identical third-person pronomial marker (see below), the agent and recipient of an action are disambiguated by word order, as in this example.

Navajo: Atʼééd ashkii yiyiiłtsą́. Gloss: girl boy 3.ACC-3.NOM-see.PERF English: The girl saw the boy.

Navajo: Ashkii atʼééd yiyiiłtsą́. Gloss: boy girl 3.ACC-3.NOM-see.PERF English: The boy saw the girl.

However, some speakers order the subject and object based on "noun ranking". In this system, nouns are ranked in three categories—humans, animals, and inanimate objects—and within these categories, nouns are ranked by strength, size, and intelligence. Whichever of the subject and object has a higher rank comes first. As a result, the agent of an action may be syntactically ambiguous. Other linguists such as Eloise Jelinek consider Navajo to be a discourse configurational language, in which word order is not fixed by syntactic rules, but determined by pragmatic factors in the communicative context. However, Navajo includes a fourth person in addition to the first three; in cases of ambiguity, some speakers will use the fourth-person for the subject and third-person for the object. This phenomenon is known as yi-/bi- alternation, after yi- and bi-, the standard fourth- and third-person singular object prefixes.

Navajo is classified as "noun–genitive": in possessive noun phrases, the possessor precedes the possessed object. Navajo is a head-marking language: postpositions and possessed nouns are marked with pronomial prefixes, e.g. tsáask'eh biyaa ("under the bed"), shimá ("my mother"), Gary bikéé' ("behind Gary"). In these examples, shi- marks the first-person singular and bi- the third-person singular. Relative clauses are internally headed: they can stand alone as grammatical sentences because, at the very least, a subject pronoun is always affixed to the verb. Pronomial verb affixes exist in both nominative (subject) and accusative (object) forms; for example, the third-person singular is -Ø- in the nominative but -bi- in the accusative. Navajo is classified as a nominative–accusative language: transitive verbs take the same pronouns as the subjects of intransitive verbs.

Similarly, most nouns are not inflected for number. Instead, the verb is affixed.

Navajo: Mósí shee hólǫ́. Gloss: cat with-1.SG exist-SG-spatial-3.SG-IPFV English: I have a cat.

Navajo: Mósí shee da hólǫ́. Gloss: cat with-1.SG exist- PL -spatial-3.SG-IPFV English: I have cats.

Number marking on nouns occurs only for terms of kinship and age-sex groupings. Other prefixes that can be added to nouns include possessive markers (e.g. chidí – car; shichidí – my car) and a few adjectival enclitics (e.g. -tsoh [big] in beeʼeldǫǫhtsoh [cannon – lit. explosion-big]). Generally, an upper limit for prefixes on a noun is about four or five.

Navajo does not contain a single part of speech analogous to adjectives; rather, some verbs describe static qualitative attributes (e.g. nitsaa – he/she/it is large), and demonstrative adjectives (e.g. díí – this, these) are their own part of speech. However, these verbs, known as "neuter verbs", are distinguished by only having the imperfective mode, as they describe continuous states of being. While demonstrative adjectives precede nouns, descriptive noun modifiers, which are actually qualitative verbs used as relative clauses, follow nouns. Action verbs used as relative clauses also follow nouns. While Navajo does not require a copula for descriptive verbs, it does not allow a zero copula for equating two nominals; the verb whose base is nilį́ (with ni- as the lexical prefix and -lį́ as the imperfective stem) means "to be".

Because the presence of tones would complicate the use of intonation to express yes–no questions, as English uses, interrogation is accomplished by using the sentence-initial particle da', the noun-final affix -ísh, or both. Negation is expressed by framing the verb with the words doo and da, e.g. mósí doo nitsaa da ("the cat is not big"), or simply by preceding it with doo. Dooda, as a single word, signifies the interjection "no". Navajo has no dedicated imperative verb form; instead, the desired verb is simply conjugated into the second person as normal; for example, naniné can mean either "you are playing" or "play!".

Clauses are coordinated with dóó ("and", which also serves as a conjunction for noun phrases) and 'áádóó ("and then"). Navajo marks adverbs and subordinate clauses with the verb suffix -go (often reduced to -o or -ǫ), as in chahałhiiło ("when it is dark"). A common use of this suffix is to mark constructions like "I didn't know", "I thought that", or "it is said that", which, unlike in English, are treated as subordinate clauses rather than the focus of the sentence.

The verb is based on a stem. On an etymological level, this stem is made of a root to identify the action and the semblance of a suffix to convey mode and aspect; however, this suffix is fused beyond separability. The stem is given prefixes to indicate, in this order, the following information: postpositional object, postposition, adverb-state, iterativity, number, direct object pronoun, deictic information, another adverb-state, mode and aspect, subject pronoun, and classifier (see below). Some of these prefixes may be null, and only the mode/aspect, subject, classifier, and stem are absolutely necessary, so verbs are generally shorter than might be expected.

Classificatory verbs are a set of eleven particles used for transitive verbs to mark the object being acted on. These particles are listed here with their standard names.


 * -ʼą́ – Solid Roundish Objects
 * -yį́ – Load, Pack, Burden
 * -ł-jool – Non-Compact Matter
 * -lá – Slender Flexible Object


 * -tą́ – Slender Stiff Object
 * -ł-tsooz – Flat Flexible Object
 * -tłééʼ – Mushy Matter
 * -nil – Plural Objects 1


 * -jaaʼ – Plural Objects 2
 * -ką́ – Open Container
 * -ł-tį́ – Animate Object

For example, Navajo has no single verb that corresponds to the English to give. To say "give me some hay", the Navajo verb níłjool (Non-Compact Matter) must be used, while for "give me a cigarette" the verb nítįįh (SSO) must be used. Navajo also contains a separate system of classifiers to mark whether a verb is transitive in the first place. There are four classifiers: -Ø-, -ł-, -d-, and -l-. The -ł- classifier indicates causation, e.g. yibéézh "it's boiling" (yi-Ø-béézh) vs. yiłbéézh "he's boiling it" (yi-ł-béézh). The -d- and -l- classifiers indicate transitivity, e.g. yizéés "he's singeing it" (yi-Ø-zéés) vs. yidéés "it's being singed" (yi-d-zéés). The -d- classifier is used to transitivize verbs with -Ø-, while -l- is used for verbs with -l-.