Look and learn: glossing guidance

Given that Ákat only has one open class, form which both objects (nouns) and actions (verbs), and their modifiers, are derived, it makes little sense to follow a conventional glossing system. Instead, the clauses and sentences in this section use the following terms

Patient objects

Object class (gender) is ignored, as only a few other parts of speech are declined to match it. Object number is marked, with the word's translation following in lowercase:

Personal objects are shown thus:

Reference objects do have class (gender) agreement with the objects they reference - in this instance, both the reference object and the referenced object will show their class in the gloss:

Existentiality suffixes are not translated, but rather bear the following glosses:

Name suffixes are not differentiated or translated; they carry the gloss:

Modifying particles

Numbers are translated without gloss. Modifiers are translated as the Ramajal modifier (red) rather than its nominative form (redness).

Oblique objects and particles

Oblique particles are glossed as follows:

Where the oblique object phrase is acting as a temporal oblique or agentive oblique, the O- is replaced with T- and A- respectively, for example:

Action scopes

All actions carry a scope - even the unmarked one (which in the gloss is shown with ø). Because the scopes are in effect inflective prefixes rather than a set of agglutinative particles, they are glossed in square brackets, with the components separated by periods as necessary:

For example:

The pro-verb vz - also known as the scope stem - is glossed as SCOPER.

Action aspect

All actions demonstrate an aspect - the aspect particle is analogous to an object's case and number:

Agentive and patientive markers

Use the personal object markup given above

Agentive determiner

Not marked as such; instead use the translated article/determiner: a, the, this, that-near, that-far, REFLEX. There's no need to differentiate between the incorporated and unincorporated versions of each particle, though an unincorporated definite article will need to be shown in the Ákat script as ø.

Action modality

As modal particles are not a required part of the verb, they should only be shown when present. Rather than attempt a translation, use the following markup:

Where a modal particle splits an agentive noun stem from its case particle, both the particle and the stem should carry the case letter (in square brackets eg [W], [J], [N], [T], [S]), with the translation given under the stem.

Evidentiality markers

Where they are used, they should be given the following markup:


This page was last updated on Tecudistuu-35, 529: Ïmyuu-57 Gevile