The Ámérizkunxa Conjugation

Ámérizkunxa features a mechanism called polypersonal agreement. More precisely, a transitive verb is marked both for the agent and the direct object, while an intransitive verb is only marked for the subject.

Ámérizkunxa has 18 pronouns : 10 for the terrestrial gender, and 8 for the divine gender. The 2^nd person (both singular and plural) of the terrestrial gender is distinguished by politeness (T-V distinction). And for both genders, the 3^rd person pronouns are distinguished by obviation, that is to say by the relative distance to the speaker, whether physical or conceptual. By convention, I'll refer to the the 3^rd person obviative pronouns as « 4^th person » pronouns.

Strong Form Tenses

Ámérizkunxa has two inflectional tenses, called "strong" because the agreements directly affect the verb. These tenses are non-future, and future. Out of context, non-future primarily tends to mark present, not past. It is usually formed by adding the subject agreement to the verb stem. The future is formed similarly, but the verb is suffixed by its first vowel followed by the unvoiced consonant corresponding to its first consonant. For example, the future stem for oboter « may » is oboterop-.

As stated above, the conjugation of an intransitive verb isn't polypersonal. For that, the possible forms are significantly reduced. Here are all possible strong forms for the verb zkun « to speak » :

On the other hand, transitive verb conjugation is a bit more complicated : with 18 pronouns and 2 tenses, it's theorically 648 possible forms for a single verb. However, some agent-patient pairs are impossible. For example, a first person terrestrial plural cannot be associated with a first person divine singular, as the divine gender prevails. These forms are greyed out. Here is an example with the verb mųzit « make wet » :

Relative Form Tenses

Ámérizkunxa has two relative forms that add onto strong forms to form a total of six "compound" tenses. Both are marked with a prefix added onto the conjugated form :

• The anterior form prefix zau-, associated with the non-future, marks the past tense. With the future, it marks the past-in-the-future (anterior future) tense.
• The posterior form prefix di-, associated with the non-future, marks the near future tense. With the future, it marks the remote future tense.

Weak Form ~&Aktionsarten

Onto the previous conjugations is added another dimension : the "weak form" is actually a participle form of the verb, associated with an auxiliary. The participle agrees with the listener's gender/rank, no matter what the sentence is about. The participle is marked by the prefix ǫr- and a suffix corresponding to the listener : -ǫ for the terrestrial inanimate (very rare but attested), -o for the terrestrial informal, -a for the terrestrial formal, and -á for the divine.

The auxiliary corresponds to one of those 18 Aktionsarten. An Aktionsart, or lexical aspect, is a verbal form (or here, an auxiliary) that lexically reflect an aspect, mood, or other specificity of the verb. They are :

Auxiliaries are known to be irregular verbs. The most extreme example is the verb iʒam « to be » ; not only its stem is replaced with a highly mutated version of the agentive pronoun (the regular patientive agreement is preserved), but the reflexive/intransitive inflections mutated even further, losing their relatively regular stem.

For example, the first person terrestrial stem is niʒi-, merging of niz+iʒam {niʒi < ^?niʒiʒmi < *niʒiʒimi < *niz͜  iʒami},
while the first person reflexive/intransitive (used with attribute adjectives) is nyaʒ {nyaʒ < ^?niʒ͜͡a < *niziʒami < *niz͜  iʒami}.

(Notice that metathesis, that is the inversion of two nearby sounds, happened in monopersonal forms but not in polypersonal stems)

Below are featured non-future tenses only. The future tense being quite recent, it's unfortunately regular. The future stem for iʒam is thus iʒamis- for every person.