Snat Sajem Tan/Word Order and the Perfective and Continuous Aspects

We are now at a stage whereat we can begin to form sentences. You have seen some sentences already in lesson 1. In order to form sentences, you need to know about Sajem Tan word order and how verbs work. In this lesson, you will learn more about both.

Word order
Sentences in Sajem Tan are typically OVS—in other words, object-verb-subject. Let's look at some examples.


 * Tan||kygykšo||dê.
 * honey||eat-continuous||I.neutral
 * colspan=3|"I am eating honey."
 * }
 * colspan=3|"I am eating honey."
 * }

As you learned in lesson 3, adverbs go right before the verb.
 * Vazöt||zanum||du.
 * cat||be-gnomic||it.neutral
 * colspan=3|"It is a cat."
 * }
 * colspan=3|"It is a cat."
 * }

Some verbs are intransitive, meaning they have no object. In these cases, sentences are VS (verb-subject).
 * Našët||vyn||kexekšo||dê.
 * love||still||feel-continuous||I.neutral
 * colspan=4|"I'm still in love." (literally: "I still feel love.")
 * }
 * colspan=4|"I'm still in love." (literally: "I still feel love.")
 * }

In later lessons, you will learn about experiencer verbs and the passive voice and how they alter sentence structure, but this is not that lesson.
 * Žnëmšo||dê.
 * glow-continuous||I.neutral
 * "I am glowing."
 * }
 * "I am glowing."
 * }

Perfective and Continuous aspect
In some languages you may have studied, verbs conjugate (that is, their forms change slightly) to indicate who is performing the action (known as person, such as first, second, or third person), when the action was or will be performed (known as tense, such as past or future), how the speaker feels about the action (known as mood, such as subjunctive or imperative), etc. In Sajem Tan, verbs are marked for aspect. Aspect allows the speaker (or writer) to emphasize how an action extends over time. (This is different from tense, because tense expresses where in time an action occurred.)

In this lesson, you will be introduced to two of the aspects used in Sajem Tan's verbs: perfective and continuous.

The perfective aspect, marked with -fê, portrays the action as a complete unit. The internal structure of the event, if it exists at all, is irrelevant to what is being said. In other words, the emphasis is on the action as a whole unit or event, not a process. Be careful that you don't mistake complete for completed:
 * The perfective does indeed denote a complete situation, with beginning, middle, and end. The use of 'completed', however, puts too much emphasis on the termination of the situation, whereas the use of the perfective puts no more emphasis, necessarily, on the end of a situation than on any other part of the situation, rather all parts of the situation are presented as a single whole.

In contrast, the continuous aspect, marked by -šo, emphasizes the internal process of the action. It is similar to the Russian imperfective aspect, in that they both "describe actions as processes that have no temporal borders." This doesn't mean the action doesn't have any endpoints, just that they are not being emphasized. What's emphasized is the action or process between the endpoints.