Morphosyntax Ubykh is agglutinative and polysynthetic: ('we will not be able to go back'), ('if you had said it'). It is often extremely concise in its word forms. The boundaries between nouns and verbs is somewhat blurred. Any noun can be used as the root of a stative verb ( 'child', 'I was a child'), and many verb roots can become nouns simply by the use of noun affixes ( 'to say', 'what I say').
Nouns The noun system in Ubykh is quite simple. It has three main noun cases (the oblique-ergative case may be two homophonous cases with differing function, thus presenting four cases in total): • direct or
absolutive case, marked with the bare
root; this indicates the
subject of an intransitive sentence and the
direct object of a transitive sentence (e.g. 'a man') • oblique-
ergative case, marked in -; this indicates either the subject of a
transitive sentence, targets of
preverbs, or
indirect objects which do not take any other suffixes ( '(to) a child') •
locative case, marked in -, which is the equivalent of English
in,
on or
at. There are X other cases that exist in Ubykh too: •
instrumental case (-) was also treated as a case in Dumézil (1975). •
instrumental-comitative case (-). • Another pair of
postpositions, - ('to[wards]') and - ('for'), have been noted as synthetic
datives (e.g. 'I will send it to the prince'), but their status as cases is also best discounted. Nouns do not distinguish
grammatical gender. The
definite article is (e.g. 'the man'). There is no
indefinite article directly equivalent to the English
a or
an, but -(root)- (literally 'one'-(root)-'certain') translates French
un : e.g. ('a certain young man').
Number is only marked on the noun in the ergative case, with -. The number marking of the absolutive argument is either by
suppletive verb roots (e.g. 'he is in the car' vs. 'they are in the car') or by verb suffixes: ('he goes'), ('they go'). The
second person plural prefix - triggers this plural suffix regardless of whether that prefix represents the ergative, the absolutive, or an
oblique argument: • Absolutive: ('I give you all to him') • Oblique: ('he gives me to you all') • Ergative: ('you all give it/them to me') Note that, in this last sentence, the plurality of
it (-) is obscured; the meaning can be either 'You all give
it to me' or 'You all give
them to me'.
Adjectives, in most cases, are simply suffixed to the noun: ('pepper') with ('red') becomes ('red pepper'). Adjectives do not
decline.
Postpositions are rare; most locative
semantic functions, as well as some non-local ones, are provided with
preverbal elements: ('you wrote it for me'). However, there are a few postpositions: ('like me'), ('near the prince').
Pronouns Free pronouns in all North-West Caucasian languages lack an ergative-absolutive distinction.
Possession Possessed nouns have their plurality marked with the affix . {{fs interlinear|indent=3|italics2=no|italics3=yes
Verbs A
pastpresentfuture distinction of verb
tense exists (the suffixes - and - represent past and future) and an
imperfective aspect suffix is also found (-, which can combine with tense suffixes). Dynamic and stative verbs are contrasted, as in
Arabic, and verbs have several
nominal forms. Morphological
causatives are not uncommon. The conjunctions ('and') and ('but') are usually given with verb suffixes, but there is also a free particle corresponding to each: • - 'and' (free particle , borrowed from Arabic); • - 'but' (free particle ) Pronominal
benefactives are also part of the verbal complex, marked with the preverb -, but a benefactive cannot normally appear on a verb that has three agreement prefixes already.
Gender only appears as part of the
second person paradigm, and then only at the speaker's discretion. The feminine second person index is -, which behaves like other pronominal prefixes: ('he gives [it] to you [normal; gender-neutral] for me'), but compare 'he gives [it] to you [feminine] for me').
Agreement Oblique 1 markers are limited to marking the agreement of a noun before a relational preverb and Oblique 2 markers are used for not only marking agreement with local and directional preverbs but also the simple oblique, or dative, arguments. The second-person is an archaic pronoun used to indicate that the person being referred to is a female, or heckling the speaker in some way.
Dynamic verb conjugation Dynamic Ubykh verbs are split up in two groups: Group I which contain the simple tenses and Group II which contain derived counterpart tenses. Only the Karaclar dialect uses the progressive tense and the plural is unknown. The singular-plural distinction is used when the subject, the ergative, is singular or plural. Square brackets indicate elided vowels; parenthesis indicate optional parts of the stem; and the colon indicates the boundary of a morpheme.
Simple past The verbs in the simple past tense are conjugated with - in the singular and - in the plural. Examples: • - to say → (s)he said • - to eat → (s)he ate • - to know → (s)he knew • - to go → (s)he went
Mirative past The verbs in the mirative past tense are conjugated with - in the singular and - in the plural. Examples: • - to say → (s)he said apparently • - to eat → (s)he ate apparently • - to know → (s)he knew apparently • - to go → (s)he went apparently
Present The verbs in the present tense are conjugated with - in the singular and - in the plural. Examples: • - to say → (s)he says • - to eat → (s)he eats • - to know → (s)he knows • - to go → (s)he goes
Future I The verbs in the present tense are conjugated with - in the singular and - in the plural. It conveys a sense of certainty, immediacy, obligation, or intentionality. Examples: • - to say → (s)he certainly will say • - to eat → (s)he certainly will eat • - to know → (s)he certainly will know • - to go → (s)he certainly will go
Future II The verbs in the present tense are conjugated with - in the singular and - in the plural. It conveys a generic sense of the future as well as an exhortative sense such as: (let's go!). Examples: • - to say → (s)he will say • - to eat → (s)he will eat • - to know → (s)he will know • - to go → (s)he will go
Static verb conjugation In all dialects and speakers, only two static tenses exist: present and past.
Aspect There are five basic aspects that exist besides the aspects that exist within the Ubykh tense system. They are: habitual, iterative, exhaustive, excessive, and potential. A speaker may combine one of these aspects with another to convey more complex aspects in conjunction with the tenses. A few meanings covered in
English by
adverbs or
auxiliary verbs are given in Ubykh by verb suffixes: • ('I can eat it') - ('I can drink it') • ('I eat it all the time') - ('I drink it all the time') • ('I am eating it all up') - ('I am drinking it all up') • ('I eat it too much') - ('I drink it too much') • ('I eat it again') - ('I drink it again')
Questions Questions may be marked grammatically, using verb suffixes or prefixes: • Yesno questions with -: ? ('did you see that?') • Complex questions with -: ? ('what is your name?') Other types of questions, involving the pronouns 'where' and 'what', may also be marked only in the verbal complex: ('where are you going?'), ('what had you said?').
Preverbs and determinants Many local, prepositional, and other functions are provided by
preverbal elements providing a large series of
applicatives, and here Ubykh shows remarkable complexity. Two main types of preverbal elements exist: determinants and preverbs. The number of preverbs is limited, and mainly show
location and
direction. The number of determinants is also limited, but the class is more
open; some determinant prefixes include - ('with regard to a horse') and - ('with regard to the foot or base of an object'). For simple locations, there are a number of possibilities that can be encoded with preverbs, including (but not limited to): • above and touching • above and not touching • below and touching • below and not touching • at the side of • through a space • through solid matter • on a flat horizontal surface • on a non-horizontal or vertical surface • in a homogeneous mass • towards • in an upward direction • in a downward direction • into a tubular space • into an enclosed space There is also a separate directional preverb meaning 'towards the speaker': -, which occupies a separate slot in the verbal complex. However, preverbs can have meanings that would take up entire phrases in English. The preverb - signifies 'on the earth' or 'in the earth', for instance: ('they buried his body'; literally, "they put his body in the earth"). Even more narrowly, the preverb - signifies that an action is done out of, into or with regard to a fire: ('I take a brand out of the fire'). == Lexicon ==