Verbs Verb stems are modified for aspect and mood. The
imperfective and
perfective aspects and the
volitional (whether an action was intentional),
infinitive, disjunct, and
imperative (commands) moods are differentiated. In verb suffixes, the infinitive, disjunct (action not intended or not known to be intended), past observational,
mirative (speaker's surprise),
volitional,
augmentative (greater intensity),
participle,
durative (action lasts through an extended time),
hortative (plural imperative), dictative (narrating a story), descentive, ablative, and
locative are distinguished. A verb stem may take on up to three suffixes. The perfective and imperfective aspects are often treated as past and non-past tenses, respectively. The labels "locative" and "ablative" do not refer to the function of the aspect but rather the homomorphous case-like clitic of the same name. Sherpa is strictly verb-final. The infinitive also marks the verb of a relative clause and a general action with no specific subject. The ablative marking denotes successive actions with some causal relationship. The locative marking denotes when the action in the main clause is done for the purpose of achieving the action in the locative clause. The copula(Imperfective
hín, perfective
hot̪u)is used for existence, location, identity, and adjectival predicates. The evidential particle
wɛ́ occurs at the end of phrases to denote an action which the speaker witnessed. The negative particle
má is used with perfective verbs.
Nouns There are four case-like clitics in Sherpa:
nominative,
genitive,
locative, and
ablative. These can also be used to mark arguments of a verb. There is a
split-ergative system based on aspect;
nominative-accusative in the imperfective and
ergative-absolutive in the perfective.
Pronouns Personal pronouns in Sherpa inflect for number and case. Third-person pronouns may be used as demonstratives, and the third person singular nominative also serves as the postnominal definite marker. There are two articles, which occur phrase-finally. The indefinite form is signaled with the enclitic -
i at the end of a noun phrase.
Adjectives The general word order within noun-phrases is Noun-Adjective. Quantifiers and numerals also follow the noun they modify. Numerals may take on the suffix
-pa to denote ordinality or
-kʌr to denote collectivity. == Sample text ==