Okaikiar verbs inflect to indicate person, number, tense, mood, and aspect. There is one regular conjugation and a few irregular verbs.
In the infinitive, a regular verb is a noun of the second declension ending in -an; this noun refers to the occurrence of the action and is usually translated via the English gerund. The other forms of the verb are obtained by adding one or more suffixes to the stem of this noun; where each noun form has its own distinct suffix, different verb forms are achieved by combining suffixes. This is called agglutination.
For instance, the stem of the noun is also the active stem of the verb. To generate the passive stem just add i. You can then add any ending to the result and it will have the same effect as when added to the active stem, except that the overall meaning will be passive instead of active. For instance, the infinitive kaikan means to speak; the passive infinitive kaikian means to be spoken. The agent form kaikar means one who speaks or speaker; the passive agent form kaikiar (recognizable in the language name) means that which is spoken or speech.
Okaikiar verbs have two voices: active and passive. Active voice is the default; it is indicated simply by the absence of any voice marker (indicated in the charts by a zero, 0). Passive voice is indicated by appending an i to the stem.
| Voice | |
|---|---|
| Active | 0 |
| Passive | i |
Each of these suffixes specifies a combination of person, number, and mood, and can't be decomposed into independent parts that specify each of these separately. So here I provide a separate chart for each mood showing the endings for each person and number combination in that mood.
Okaikiar verbs have six moods: the infinitive, used only in the infinitive forms; the imperative, used to give commands; the indicative, which is the most common mood, used for simple statements about what is true; the subjunctive, which is used for statements about what might be true; the conditional, which is roughly equivalent to the English auxiliary would; and the attributive. This last "mood" is used to turn a verb into a modifier. Okaikiar has no adjectives, using verbs for that purpose; instead of an adjective meaning blue, it has a verb meaning to be blue. But rather than require a rablative clause to describe something in passing (as in "The sky which is blue" for "the blue sky"), Okaikiar has an attributive verbal mood which effectively turns the verb into a genuine adjective. Thie nice thing about the attributive mood is that it combines with the other verbal suffixes to get the full expressivity of the rablative clause construction without the verbosity; there are simple two word phrases for "the blue sky", "the sky which used to be blue", "the sky which shall be blue", "the sky which has been made blue", etc.
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Okaikiar verbs have three aspects, which identify the completeness of the action at the time indicated by the tense. In the the usual unspecified case, nothing is said about the completeness of the action, or the idea of completeness doesn't apply. In the progressive aspect, the action is explicitly in progress and not yet complete. In the complete aspect, the action is explicitly over and done with. Progressive verbs are often translated with the English progressive tenses, such as am speaking; complete verbs are often translated with the English perfect tenses, such as have spoken.
| Aspect | |
|---|---|
| Unspecified | 0 |
| In progress | r |
| Complete | l |
The final suffix indicates the verb tense.
| Tense | |
|---|---|
| Present | m |
| Past | z |
| Future | zam |
Finally, here are some example forms of the verb koman, which means "to love".
| Form | Description | Translation |
|---|---|---|
| koman | Active infinitive | to love, loving (noun) |
| komidam | Passive second-person singular imperative present | Be (thou) loved! |
| kommarm | Active first person singular indicative progressive present | I am loving |
| komilulz | Passive third person singular subjunctive complete past | That he had been loved. |
| komryrzam | Active first person plural conditional future | We would love. |
| komom | Active present attributive | loving (adjective) |
| komar | Active agent | lover, one who loves |
| komiar | Passive agent | love, person who is loved |
Note that there is a related noun komal, which means "love" (the emotion), but this is not derived by any regular rule from the verb.
The verb an is not really irregular, but it seems odd because it has no stem, or rather, it's stem is 0. Each of its forms is thus the same as the bare ending of the corresponding form in the regular conjugation: mam = I am, etc.
The verb kan is typical of the small number of monosyllabic verbs in Okaikiar. Since the stem is a single consonant, and initial consonant clusters are illegal in Okaikiar, these verbs cannot be conjugated normally in the active voice; *kmam for I do is not a legal word. Therefore these verbs acquire a schwa in the active voice, making k'mam the Okaikiar word for I do.
The verb zalan is a stem-changing verb. In all moods except the infinitive and attributive, the a of the stem is reduced to a schwa: z'lmam = I go, etc.
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