The Ancestral Verb

Introduction

The canonical Ancestral verb is  composed of three distinct elements:

1. A vocalic focus marker circumfix
2. A consonantal semantic root
3. A vocalic tense marker infix

In other words, each verb can be analyzed as V1 + CC + VV + CC + V1 where:

1. V1 = focus marker (indicating the emphasis of the sentence)
2. CC__CC = semantic root (indicating the lexical meaning of the verb)
3. VV = tense marker (indicating one of twenty-five tenses)

Every verb is introduced (marked) by one or more mood particles, indicating the attitude of the speaker to the thought.

An interesting feature of Ancestral is that every noun is in effect a “frozen” verb, that is a “being” at a particular moment in time.