Xiri grammar

Xiri is primarily an SVO language, with a change of word order used to perform several grammatical functions and express different meanings. Dependent clauses are always verb-initial, either VOS or VSO, while passive constructions always place the verb at the end of the phrase, either SOV or OSV.

The morphology of Xiri is agglutinative, meaning words are formed by sequences of distinct morphemes which each serve a single grammatical function. Most words typically consist of 1-4 morphemes.

Case
Nouns are marked with suffixes for three primary cases: nominative, accusative and dative:

Number
Xiri features two plural markers:


 * u- / ū- / w- — Generic plural
 * ugu- / ugū- / ugw- — Intense plural

The Xiri plural is not regularly used to refer to plural entities, some nouns never occur in a plural form. It is not a grammatical number in the strict sense, but closer to a lexical derivation, often used to refer to closed sets or groups of things, in which usage it can carry a definite sense. For example, Udovuʼo is the generic plural form of tovuʼo "home-island", referring to the five islands which make up the archipelago, while the name of Xiri's writing system Ugugo is an intensified plural of ko "cut", yielding the meaning "very many cuts".

The plural markers notably do not affect the placement of stress, thus should be considered clitics in the context of Xiri morphophonology. For example, Udovuʼo has the stress on the third syllable [u.doˈvu.ʔo], not the second as might be expected.

Pronouns
Xiri has only three pronouns which refer exclusively to humans: first person ña, second person su and third person mi which act like any other nouns morphologically and syntactically. Case suffixes can be regularly attached to the pronouns, giving the accusatives ñayo, suyo, miyo and the genitives ñaže, suže, miže, though the accusatives in particular also have irregular, unstressed forms ño, xu, myo.

The reduplicated plural forms, ñaña, suzu, mimi, are sometimes used when context requires the plurality of the person be marked. Additionally, uña is used by some speakers to express an inclusive first person plural, contrasted with the exclusive ñaña. The much rarer intensified plural uguña, an all-inclusive pronoun referring to all people or the Xiyeru populace, is also attested in very specific phrases, such as uguñaže rhūʼu "our ocean" meaning "the world".

Pronouns are used sparingly in natural speech. The first person pronoun is the rarest, since it can be dropped completely from most types of phrase without ambiguity, though it is seen as polite to explicitly use ña. The third person pronoun is also uncommon since the Xiyeru prefer to refer to people by their xińuʼu "true-name", a part of the complex Xiyeru personal name, or generic nouns like egiru "woman" and eme "child". The second person su is the most commonly used pronoun, but can be seen as impolite and so is still replaced by other terms more often than not. One such term is rhavoru "other person", which more broadly acts like a fourth person "someone" as well as being a polite way to refer to the listener.

Tense
Verbs express the present tense by default, with the auxiliary verbs no and ci used to express past and future tense respectively. The auxiliary verb is typically placed before the content verb, but this order can be reversed.

Both auxiliaries used to be ordinary verbs with their own lexical meanings. No was originally an attributive copula used with adjectival and genitive compliments, especially in the locative subcase, which contrasted with the equative copula ca, which later came to subsume both usages. Ci simply meant "to go" before becoming restricted to just a future auxiliary, while canēs "to step, walk" simultaneously replaced ci with the semantically broader meaning of "to go", and a new verb cadaba was innovated with the narrower meaning "to step".

Aspect
Verbs in Xiri have no lexical aspect, instead marking aspectual differences with one of many suffixes on the verb. When a tense auxiliary verb is used, it takes the aspect suffix, leaving the content verb bare.

The aspects can be divided into three main categories:


 * Simple: The continuous, progressive, perfective and iterative aspects describe the temporal structure of simple events which occur at the focal reference time.
 * Complex: The prospective, continuative, inchoative, terminative and resumptive aspects describe how events start, end or continue with respect to a focal reference time.
 * Pseudo-aspects: The accidental and intentional "aspects" are not aspects in the strict sense, but are used similarly to the aspects to express the manner in which the action takes place with respect to the focal reference time.

Continuous
An unmarked verb has a generic imperfective aspect. In Early Xiri, this aspect was used ambiguously for any ongoing action, but this was later narrowed to a continuous aspect, representing states as opposed to actions. It also has a habitual usage.

Progressive
Verbs can unambiguously mark a progressive aspect as separate to the generic imperfective by reduplication of the first syllable of the stem. The use of progressive reduplication became more popular in Later Xiri, leaving the unmarked verb rarely representing a progressive aspect.

Perfective
The perfective is marked with the suffix -ha, only appearing on the tense auxiliaries in the forms noca (past perfective) and ciha (future perfective). It expresses an action with no internal temporal structure, but a temporal position relative to a reference time, an event which either happened or will happen.

Iterative
The iterative aspect -twa describes actions that repeat over a small period of time.

Prospective
Events in the immediate future are expressed with the prospective aspect, which only appears in the future auxiliary form cije.

Continuative
The continuative aspect -yo is used for ongoing actions which started before the time under consideration. The past tense form noyo expresses that an event in the past "was to continue" until the present and perhaps beyond, while the future ciyo says that the event will still be ongoing at a future time under consideration.

Inchoative
The inchoative marks the beginning or inception of an action with the suffix -rhi/-ri.

Terminative
Conversely, the terminative aspect expresses the end or completion of an action, marked with the suffix -kyo.

Resumptive
The resumptive aspect -ño denotes the restarting of an action.

Defective
The defective aspect is the only aspect which is negative by default, and becomes positive when negated. It is marked with the suffix -pe/-be and expresses that an event was about to happen or should have happened, but did not.

Accidental
The suffix -ī, or -yi on vowel-final verbs, expresses an action that occurs suddenly and accidentally.

Intentional
The adjacently used "intentional" form of the verb, -ē/-ye, expresses an action that occurs carefully and deliberately.

Mood
Grammatical mood is marked primarily by a modal particle placed before the verb. The absence of such a particle indicates the indicative mood. A modal particle has a tendency to cliticise to the verb, in which form it is unstressed and, if it ends in a vowel, triggers allophonic voicing of the verb prefixes f(a)- and c(a)- to v(a)- and j(a)- respectively.

There are five such particles:


 * Optative: ō
 * Permissive: ax
 * Imperative: i
 * Conditional: ha
 * Interrogative: xa

Optative
The optative mood is marked with ō, used primarily for wishes and hopes.

The optative can also function as a polite imperative, jussive or hypothetical mood.

It can also double as an evidential particle, in which usage it expresses opinions, emotions and judgements.

Permissive
The particle ax marks the permissive mood, actions permitted by the speaker, and is the only modal particle which does not trigger voicing of the verb initial consonant when cliticised.

Imperative
The imperative particle i is used for commands to the listener. In an imperative phrase, the subject is always implied to be the second person and the explicit pronoun su is forbidden, but the listener can still be referenced by name.

The particle can stand alone as an exclamation, meaning "do it!".

Conditional
Conditional phrases always begin with the particle ha and the verb immediately following, contrary to the usual fluid word order with default SVO.

Interrogative
Questions front the verb similarly to the conditional mood, with the particle xa preceding the verb.

Evidentiality
When a modal particle is not present, i.e. in an indicative statement, an evidential particle may occur strictly at the end of the sentence. The evidentials might not be a closed set, certain particles are used only by certain regions or social groups, while what is a verb on one island might be solely used as an evidential particle on another.

Evidentials can be sorted into three sources of evidence:


 * First-hand — Eirectly from the speaker
 * Second-hand — From some other particular person, reported by the speaker
 * Third-hand — Information which generally exists, may not have a source, or comes from some unknown person

Some examples of evidentials taken from the standard dialect of Xiri in the Horizon period, originating on the central island, are shown below.

First-hand
The most common first-hand evidential is mu, which generally marks visual-sensory evidence. It also can be used by the speaker to assert what they have reasoned to be true, a sort of opinion-as-fact. This usage might be semantically related to one sense of the verb fawiʼi "see", that is "think, reckon, figure out".

The particle se conversely marks non-visual sensory evidence, such as by touch or hearing. It can also mean a general feeling that something is the case without actual support evidence.

Another first-hand evidential sometimes used is kwa, which says that the evidence is direct and sensory like mu and se, but the actual event in question was not directly observed, rather it has been inferred by some resulting circumstance. It sometimes expresses that something is obvious, or should already be known to the speaker, or that what is being stated is "as much as is understood", but perhaps not wholly accurate.

Second-hand
A system of four second-hand reportative particles allow the speaker to express their judgement of the truthfulness of the reported information:


 * am — Certainly or almost certainly true
 * rhe — Likely to be true
 * tu — Unlikely to be true
 * hi — Certainly or almost certainly false

Additionally there is the rarely used pya, which can be described as expressing "hearsay", meaning a second-hand source exists, but who exactly and how trustworthy cannot be determined.

These reportative particles are almost exclusively used in social contexts that require the most polite possible speech, and their use can seem artificial or forced if not applied exactly according to social norms.

The quotative particle kyē can also be used to directly quote second-hand information without offering judgement.

Third-hand
Only two third-hand particles are attested, ńe and mi, both expressing common knowledge or wisdom. The broad difference in usage is difficult to precisely determine, there may well be a significant overlap, though they are separated by some particular uses. For example, ńe is used for historical narratives, expressing something like "it is said that" or "so it goes", while mi is used in the context of an educator or instructor teaching a student.

Interrogative use
If a statement is made with an evidential particle, e.g. mu expressing visual-sensory evidence, the listener can respond with a question using only the interrogative and evidential particles: "xa mu?", asking the speaker to explain the supporting evidence. Not all evidentials can function this way. An answer to this kind of evidential question can then end in the same particle mu to affirm and connect to the original statement.