Ákat actions: the seats at the table
The presence of articles (a, the) and demonstratives (this, that, those) in the base languages from which Ákat was developed can be well attested, and indeed continue to exist in the surviving Nakap lineage languages across Ewlah. For some reason, however, the early Nakap Philosophers chose to abandon them - possibly because the differences in article and demonstrative systems used in the base languages was considered to be evidence of the corrupt nature of the system.
For the most part, the Philosophers chose instead to use the demonstrative object tapas to modify objects requiring a demonstrative (see the object classes webpage for more details), but in one particular they were forced to retain the vestiges of the old article/demonstrative system: the agentive determiner.
| C | g | M | G | v | V | a | D | p | E |
| tense+ conjunctions | agentive class | modality | agentive root | action class +aspect | action root | agent marker | agentive determiner | patient marker | evidentiality marker |
Every agent object requires an agentive determiner - this is the main reason why objects in verbless sentences are considered to be patients, not agents. These agentive determiner particles are divided into two groups. One group is used when an agent object has been incorporated within the action clause; the other group is used when no incorporation has taken place (unincorporated).
| Analagous to | Incorporated particle | Unincorporated particle |
|---|---|---|
| a person or an object | -!b- | -b- |
| the person or object | -!- | - |
| this person or object | -!d- | -d- |
| that (near to the speaker) person or object | -!g- | -g- |
| that (not near to the speaker) person or object | -!hq- | -hq- |
A further use of the agentive determiner is to show whether the verb is acting reflexively or not. When the agent and the patient of the clause are the same, then the agentive determiner becomes:
| reflexive verb | -!dhx- | -dhx- |
The reflexive agentive determiner can also be used when the agent and patient are different - this indicates that the reflexive case is inclusive (eg the boys washed each other) rather than the more normal exclusive case (eg the boys washed themselves).