II. Animate Intransitive Verbs (VAI)

Animate Intransitive Verbs are classified as such because 1) they are intransitive verbs (i.e. they do not take an object), and 2) the subject of the verb refers to a (grammatically) animate participant. Since VAI stems do refer to an animate participant, they show the full range of first, second and third person marking and thus form larger paradigms than for VII stems. VAI stems can be produced in full paradigms that consist of Independent, Conjunct indicative and future conditional forms, and the Imperative.

There are three main types of VAI verb stems which will thus be subclassified as VAI₁, VAI₂, and VAI₃.

Regular or Vowel-Final VAI Stems (VAI₁)

The first and by far the most common subclass of VAI stem always end in a vowel. In fact, VAI₁ stems can end in any of the vowels except short /a/. Examples provided here show verbs stems ending in /ā/ (1), /ē/ (2), /i/ (3), /ī/ (4), /o/ (5), and /ō/ (6).

(1)  nipā-   “to sleep”           nipā   “sleep!”

(2)  mētawē-   “to play”      mētawē   “play!”

(3)  api-   “to sit”                  api   “sit!”

(4)  tapasī-   “to flee”           tapasī   “flee!”

(5)  nikamo-   “to sing”       nikamo   “sing!”

(6)  pasikō-   “to get up”     pasikō   “get up!”

These examples also show that VAI₁ stems can serve as the (unmarked) second person singular (2s) Immediate Imperative form, as long as the meaning of the stem is conducive to being issued as a command. Many VAI stems are indeed active verbs, like those in (1-6), but others are more stative and so are less likely to be used as Imperatives (e.g. kinwāskosi- “be tall!” would be an odd thing to tell someone to do).

/n/-Final VAI Stems (VAI₂)

A smaller class of VAI stems end in an /n/. These VAI₂ stems can take all of the forms within the regular VAI paradigm, with certain minor modifications. The example in (7) shows that the /n/-final stem can serve unmarked as the third person singular (3s) Independent form, while an -i must be added for these stems to be used as second person singular (2s) Immediate Imperatives.

(7)  pimisin-   “to lie, to lie down”          pimisin   “s/he is lying down”       pimisini       “lie down!”

/am/-Theme VAI Stems (VAI₃)

Finally, a very limited number of intransitive stems pattern exactly the same as regular or consonant-final VTI stems (VTI₁), and are only classified as VAI stems here because one cannot teach the distinction between transitive and intransitive only to ignore it for these stems. As with VTI₁ stems, these VAI stems end in a consonant, add the /am/ theme for the third person singular (3s) Independent form, and add an -a to indicate the second person singular (2s) Immediate Imperative.

(8)  ostostot-   “to cough”          ostostotam   “s/he coughs”       ostostota       “cough!”

 

Each of these stem types will be more fully described and exemplified on their own respective page:

VAI₁      regular / vowel-final animate intransitive stems

VAI₂      /n/-final animate intransitive stems

VAI₃      /-am/-theme animate intransitive stems