User:Aegon/High Valyrian Tutorial/4-2

Lesson 2|Prefixes and Verb Derivation

Verb Derivation

High Valyrian features three forms of common verbal prefixes.

The instrumental passive describes actions from inanimate grammatical subjects, like "the knife cut the man."

The oblique applicative promotes an indirect object, a noun in the dative case, to the direct object, in the accusative case.

The locative applicative promotes the object of an adpositional phrase to a type of indirect object.

Instrumental Passive

The instrumental passive describes actions from inanimate grammatical subjects. Form it in the following manner:

Instrumental Passive Prefix	Vowel Begins With
s-	k, p, q, t
z-	b, d, g, l, r
h-	all vowels except e and o
a-	everything else

Consider the following two sentences:

High Valyrian	English
vala egromy rōbir ezīmza	the man splits the fig with a knife
rōbir egry aezīmza	the knife splits the fig

The first has vala as the subject, the one who does the action. The second omits vala and focuses on the action of the knife. As knives do not have animacy, this sentence uses the instrumental passive. Note how the instrument promoted to the subject appears directly before the verb in contrast to the usual subject-object-verb order.