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.