SENĆOŦEN: A Grammar of the Saanich Language Main Menu Contents Preface Acknowledgments PART 1 Introduction The organization of this grammar The Place of SENĆOŦEN in the Salishan Language Family Basics of the SENĆOŦEN word Useful phrases PART 2 The SENĆOŦEN Alphabet and Sounds Consonants Vowels and Diphthongs Notes on Pronunciation PART 3 SENĆOŦEN Grammatical Patterns 2 Past and Future Tense 3 Basic Speech Acts 4 Nouns and Articles 5 Possessive Pronouns 6 Adjectives 7 Basic Word Order 8 The Preposition 9 Serial Verbs 10 Auxiliaries 11 Conjunction: ‘And/with’ and ‘but/without’ 12 No and Not 13 Self and Each Other 14 More Negative Words 15 Questions: ‘Who?,’ ‘What?,’ ‘Someone,’ ‘Something’ 16 Questions: ‘Do what?,’ ‘Say what?,’ and ‘Which one?’ 17 Subordinate Subjects in Questions 18 Questions: ‘Whose?’ 19 Every, All, Any, and Some 20 Comparison 21 Questions: ‘When?’ 22 Numbers 23 Time Expressions 24 Time Prefixes 25 Questions: ‘Where?’ 26 Location Expressions 27 Paths 28 Questions: ‘How?’ and ‘How much?’ 29 Adverbial Expressions 30 Conditional Clauses 31 Should, Must, Ought to, Want to 32 Object Pronouns 33 Passive 34 Strong, Weak, and Zero Stems 35 Participant Roles and Middle Voice 36 Recipient, Beneficiary, and Other Participants 37 Lexical Suffixes 38 Questions: ‘Why?’ 39 Because 40 Cause 41 Collective Plural 42 The Actual Aspect 43 State, Result, and Duration 44 Activity Suffixes 45 Reflexive, Inchoative, and Noncontrol Middle 46 Ȼ Clauses 47 Relative Clauses 48 Speech Act Modifiers 49 Possessed Verbs 50 Summary of Particles with Ȼ 51 So Then ... 52 Reporting Verbs and Direct Quotes 53 Indirect Quotes 54 Verbal Prefixes 55 Nominalizing Prefixes 56 Adverbial Prefixes 57 More Demonstrative Articles 58 Objects of Intent and Emotion 59 More Reduplication Patterns 60 Interjections 61 Politeness Expressions 62 Rare Prefixes and Suffixes 63 A Fully Annotated Text 64 Texts to Annotate Appendix A: Technical Description of SENĆOŦEN Sounds Appendix B: SENĆOŦEN Pronouns Appendix C: Demonstrative Articles Appendix D: SENĆOŦEN Kin Terms Appendix E: Index to Technical Linguistic Topics Appendix F: Vocabulary Bibliography SENĆOŦEN Dictionary Basic SENĆOŦEN Dictionary without root and affix indexes

1 Transitive and Intransitive Verbs

43373 34 Strong, Weak, and Zero Stems
The most important, basic element of SENĆOŦEN grammar is the distinction between transitive and intransitive. Every verb, in fact, every word in SENĆOŦEN is either transitive or intransitive, and that difference is important throughout the grammar. If you have a clear idea of the distinction, much of SENĆOŦEN grammar will fall quickly into place. Fortunately, the distinction is easy to get.

Transitive verbs are verbs that have a direct object. They indicate situations in which something is acting on something else. For example, ‘hit’ is a transitive verb in ‘I hit the ball.’ Here the ball is being acted on; it is the direct object. The subject of a transitive verb is the person performing the action.

Intransitive verbs are verbs that have no direct object. They indicate events in themselves. For example, in the sentence ‘I go’ the word is intransitive because you can’t ‘go’ something. The subject in ‘I go’ is ‘I.’

In SENĆOŦEN, transitive verbs always end a transitivizing suffix (like ‑T or ‑NEW̱) or in one of the object suffixes. Intransitive words never end in one of these suffixes. These topics will be covered in many of the sections of this grammar. For now, we will just look at how the transitive and intransitive subjects are expressed.
 

This page has paths:

  1. PART 3 SENĆOŦEN Grammatical Patterns Montler, et al.

Contents of this path:

  1. 1.1. Intransitive subject pronouns
  2. 1.2. Transitive subject pronouns

This page has tags:

  1. 17 Subordinate Subjects in Questions Montler, et al.
  2. 7.1. Transitive sentences with two noun phrases Montler, et al.
  3. 30.2. Coordinate conditional Montler, et al.
  4. 33 Passive Montler, et al.
  5. Basics of the SENĆOŦEN word Montler, et al.
  6. Notes on Pronunciation Montler, et al.
  7. 32 Object Pronouns Montler, et al.