...I couldn't come up with a better title.
This lesson will go over Selsimicu's pre-verbal particles, used to determine the time, belief, AND the urgency of your sentences, all in one simple 10-piece package!
But first, some new vocab!
(this would've been in lesson 8, following the pattern of 2 & 5, but lesson 8 already has a LOT. this one'll be more brief, so it's a better time.)
(these three demonstratives can act like nouns OR adjectives without needing -n!)
Commands and suggestions are a very important part of communicating, and Selsimicu makes it pretty easy. In these situations, you can use either "az" or "zax", which refer to mild urgency and high urgency respectively. "az" is a chill suggestion, like "hey, we should go do something fun", while "zax" is more uptight and necessary, like "she must learn how to read".
There are two ways to use both of these. The first is what I call "command mode", which is like a command in English, that loses the subject: "clean the floors", "get out", "come back later", that sort of thing! In Selsimicu, we do this by replacing the subject with "az" or "zax"! When a sentence begins with either of them, it's a command to you, the listener, so you better listen! The rest of the grammar is the same.
"look at the drawing!"
"be kind, in a different way!"
"please fix my pouch"
"don't trip."
The second way to use these is "suggestion mode", which syntactically fits in more with the other particles we'll see later. It goes directly before the main verb, and it communicates an idea similar to "should", "must", "ought to" or "gotta". Again, the rest of the grammar is unchanged! You just neatly slide them in.
"you've gotta win the game!"
"i must search for the large river"
"he deserves (should have) flowers"
"the new knife must be large!"
Selsimicu has a specific set of terms (6, technically 8, in particular) that also go directly before the main verb: the Time & Source particles! These are how Selsimicu conveys tense, or when an action happened. On the surface, it's a pretty simple 3-time system (past, present, future), but it also comes in with some built-in evidentiality.
What this means is that you have to say how sure you are about the information you're saying, on a scale from "pretty certain" to "not pretty certain". And by a scale, I mean those are the only two points. The sentence can be "reliable" or "unreliable"! This combines with the 3 tenses to make a 6-word system, like so:
| Reliable Info. | Unreliable Info. | |
|---|---|---|
| Past | mos | mozño |
| Present | leq | leqot |
| Future | raj | rajnot |
(you might notice that the unreliables all end similarly, and you'd be right! they all likely started out modifying their reliable counterparts with "ñot" or "small")
And again, once you know the words, it's just a case of sliding them in where you need them! These particles can be skipped (especially if you already specified the time & evidentiality in a previous sentence), since an unmarked sentence isn't explicitly present (though it often is). Let's see some more examples!
"i'm set on digging a hole later"
"i think you fell. not sure"
"humans might make houses. i dunno!"
"they're seriously frollicking?? what??"
"i SWEAR it made a noise."
(there's many ways you could translate these, some probably more concise than mine... it's pretty contextual! just follow the vibes)
(also, you can say past & future unmarked for trust with "or" and "uz" respectively, but it's not recommended. experiment with the above ones instead!)
Now with these particles, you can add all the time information your heart desires! Just as long as you cite your trust, and they go directly before the main verb. Don't let that slip by you!
Congratulations! You're now one step closer to closing out Selsimicu's sentence structure! Next lesson, we'll see what you'll put after the verbs!