Verbs.
The Mikir verb indicates time, past, present, or future, by means of particles prefixed or suffixed to the root. It does not vary for number,[1] gender, or person. There is no separate verb-substantive, though there are several ways of expressing existence, as do, “stay, abide,” used also for “have, possess”; plàng, “become”; làng, “exist, continue (with a sense of incompleteness)”; lē, “arrive, happen,” etc. Great use is made of adjectival or participial forms, and, in narrative, of the conjunctive participle. Compound roots are very extensively used, the principal verb being put first, then the modifying supplements, and last the time-index.
The simple, or indeterminate present is expressed by the participle with ke-, kā-, without any suffix: konàtsī nàng kedo, “where do you live?”; vo kàngjār, “the bird flies”; sārbūrā thī-lòt-sī nē kā-chirū, “the old man having died, I am weeping”; nē-phū ke-sō-kòn, “my head is aching badly.” This tense, as in other languages, is often used historically for the past.
The definite or determinate present is expressed by the same participle with -lo added: lā kopī kànghoi-lo? “What is he doing (now)?”
The habitual present is expressed by the verbal root with -lo: as vo-ātum-kē nē-phū-āthàk ingjār-lo, “the birds fly above our heads.”
The simple or narrative past is formed by the verbal root with -lo or -dèt added: lā pu-lo or pu-dèt, “he said”; nē-phū sō-dèt, “my head was aching”; lā kerī-āphī-sī lòng-lo, “he, after searching, found it.” Sometimes dèt and lo are used together: lā nē ingtòn-dèt-lo, “he abused me.” Dèt may also be used for the present when the state indicated by the verb is one that began in the past and still continues: e.g. “Why are you afraid?” may be rendered kopī āpòtsī nang pherē-dèt, or kopī āpòtsī nàng kāpherē?
The complete past is indicated by the root with tànglo added: lā-āpòtsī ne dām-tànglo, “I went, or had gone, on his account”; telòng lònglē phō-tànglo, “the boat has touched ground.” Tang is a verb meaning “to finish.” There are besides a great number of other particles indicating past time used with particular verbs. Thus, with verbs meaning “to fall,” bup and buk are common: hālā che-koi-bup, “he fell down”; hèm ru-bup, “the house collapsed”; lòng-chòng klī-bup, “the upright memorial stone fell down”; lòng-pàk klō-buk, “the flat memorial stone fell down”; thèng-pī àngsòng-pèn nàng-klō-buk, “he fell down from the top of the tree.” Such particles generally indicate not only past time but abruptness.
A periphrastic past, with the root followed by inghoi-lo, “did,” frequently occurs; this is probably an imitation of Assamese idiom.
Here may be noticed the prefix nàng, used, as the specimens show, with great frequency in narrative. It has the effect of fixing the occurrence to a known place, and may generally be rendered “there.” It is probable that this particle is originally the pronoun of the second person, and that it refers to the knowledge of the person addressed: “as you know,” “as you see.”
The future is represented in two ways: (1) by -po added to the root, to indicate an action beginning now and continuing in the future; as ītum nònkē lābàngsō ākàm āpòtsī pu-po, “we will talk about this affair now;” and (2) by -jī added, for an action which commences later on; as bādu ārlèng-tā thī-jī, “all men will die” (i.e. at some future time). As -po includes the present in the case of continuing action, it may be, and often is, used in a present sense; -jī is restricted to future time.
A compound future may be formed by adding to the root with -jī the words dòkdòk-lo: lā thī-jī dòkdòk-lo, “he is just about to die”; àn chō-jī dòkdòk-lo, “it is near breakfast-time” (rice-eating); àn īk-jī dòkdòk-lo, “the rice is nearly all done.” A doubtful future may be expressed by -jī added to the present participle: konàt chainòng ā-òk-sī dàk-sī kedo-jī, “where should cow’s flesh be here?”
From the above it will be seen that there is much indefiniteness in the indications of time afforded by the Mikir verb: except tàng for the past complete, and -jī for the future, the other suffixes may, according to circumstances, be rendered by the past, present, or future; they may also on occasion be omitted altogether. But the context generally removes all ambiguity.
Conditional phrases are formed by putting -tē or -lē, “if,” at the end of the first member, and the second generally in the future with -jī or -po. Of the conditional future an example is nàng dàm-tē, nàng lā thèk-dàm-jī, “if you go, you will see him.” The conditional past inserts āsòn (“like, supposing that,”) before -tē: dohòn do-āsòn-tē, nē lā nàm-jī, “if I had money, I would buy it.” The conditional pluperfect modifies the second member thus: nàng dàm āsòn-tē, nàng lā lòng-lòk āpòtlo, “if you had gone, you would have got it”; nàng nē thàn āsòn-tē, nē lā klèm tàng-lo, “if you had explained to me, I would have done it.”
The imperative is, for the second person, the bare root, or more usually the root strengthened by the addition of nòn or thā, and dialectically of noi; nòn (= “now”) is the strongest form. The other persons are formed by the addition of nàng (a verb meaning “to be necessary”) to the future in -po or present in -lo: “let us go” is ī-tum dàm-po-nàng; “let us go to the field and plough,” rīt hai-bai dàm-lo-nàng. We may, for the third person, use the causative form of the verb: lā-kē pedàm-nòn, “let him go.”
Participles. The present participle has the form of the adjective, with the prefixed ke- (ki-) or kā-; as kedàm, “going,” kā-chirū, “weeping.” The past participle is the root or the present participle with tàng added: dàm-tàng, “gone,” thèk-tàng, “having seen,” kā-pàngtu-tàng, “fattened.”
Perhaps the most used form of the verb, especially in narrative, is the conjunctive participle, which is either the bare root, or the root with -sī; hèm che-voi-sī thèk-lo, “having returned home, he saw.” When the past is indicated, dèt is used, either with or without -sī, as chō-dèt jun-dèt, sārburā, tòn-ārlo kaibòng pātu-joi-sī, ī-lo, “having finished eating and drinking, the old man, having quietly hidden his club in a basket, lay down”; Tèntòn, dohòn-ālàngbòng lòng-sī, rīt dàm-dē-dèt-sī, kàt-jui-lo, “Tenton, having got the bamboo-joint with the money, without returning to the field, ran away.”
When the phrase in which the conjunctive participle occurs is terminated by an imperative, the suffix is not -sī but -rā: “having eaten your rice, go,” is àn chō-rā dàm-nòn; but “having eaten his rice, he went,” is ān chōdèt-sī dàm-lo. While -sī links together parts of a narrative, -rā links together a string of imperatives.
The infinitive or verbal noun is identical in form with the present participle; kum-kiròt tàngtē kekàn ārkī nàng ārju-lònglo, “he heard (got to hear) there (nàng) the sound (ārkī) of fiddle (kum) scraping (ki-ròt) and dancing (ke-kàn).” All words beginning with ke-, ki-, and kā- may therefore be regarded as (1) adjectives, (2) participles forming tenses of the verb, or (3) verbal nouns; and it will be seen from the analysis of the specimens how clearly this at first sight strange allocation of forms can be made to express the required sense.
In all Tibeto-Burman languages the passive voice is either non-existent or little used; a sentence which in English would be stated passively is turned the other way, and appears in an active form. Thus—“Four trees were uprooted by the wind” would be rendered tomòn thèngpī ròng-philī pi-pur-koi-lo, “the wind uprooted four trees”; “this house has been thrown down by an earthquake” is chiklī-sī lābàngsō āhèm pi-ru-hup-lo, “an earthquake has thrown down this house.” Sometimes a passive may be expressed by a periphrasis, as “I was beaten,” nē kechòk èn-tàng, lit. “I received a beating.” The only unquestionable example of a passive is in the case of past participles, and here the passive is expressed by the simple expedient of putting the participle before instead of after the noun: bàng kevàn āhòr, “the drink brought by people”; mājā kelòng ārlèng, “a man bewitched”; nē ke-pī ā-àn āhòr, “the to-me-given rice and beer.” This construction is exactly parallel to the method (explained above) of expressing the relative phrase by putting the adjective first, instead of after the noun, and is in fact another case of the same idiom. The participle, which may also (as just explained) be regarded as a verbal noun, comes before the subject of the sentence, because the action passes on to the subject, instead of emanating from it, as in an active construction. We are tempted to think that languages which lack what seems to European modes of thought such essential elements as a relative pronoun and a passive voice cannot be capable of any subtlety of expression; yet this phenomenon is common to forms of speech like Tibetan, Burmese, and Chinese, which possess vast literatures dealing with all kinds of subjects, and in which it is possible to render ideas of the greatest complexity and variety. Even in Europe, the clearest and most logical of languages, French, prefers to use the active form of phrase (with on) rather than the passive.
The negative verb is a very interesting and remarkable feature of the language. A separate negative root, formed by prefixing or suffixing a negative particle, and conjugated in the same way as the positive, is indeed a common property of Tibeto-Burman speech; but in Mikir this secondary root is formed in a peculiar manner. The negating syllable -ē is added to the primitive, as un, “can,” un-ē, “cannot”; òng, “be much,” òng-e, “be not much”; ī, “lie down,” ī-ē, “not lie down.” But when the root begins with a consonant or a nexus of consonants, and is monosyllabic, the consonant or nexus is repeated before the added vowel: thèk, “see, be able”; thèk-thē, “not see, be unable”; dàm, “go,” dàm-dē, “not go”; kroi, “believe, obey,” kroi-krē, “disbelieve, disobey”; mèk-pràng, “eye-open, awake,” mèk-pràng-prē, “not awake.” When the verb is of two or more syllables, the last is chosen for reduplication: inghoi, “do,” inghoi-hē, “not do”; ingjinsō, “show mercy,” ingjinsō-sē, “not show mercy”; chini (Ass. loan-word), “recognise,” chini-nē, “not recognise.”
The secondary root thus obtained is treated in construction just like the positive root, and takes the tense-suffixes: pàk-tā pī-vàng-vē-dèt-lo, “anybody to give him (anything) came not.” The time-index is, however, with negative verbs more often dropped as unnecessary, owing to the context showing what the time-relation is.
In the imperative the reduplication is not used; the particle -rī is added to the positive root, with or without nòn as well: thèk-nòn, “see!”; thèk-rī, or thèk-rī-nòn, “see not!”
It may be added that this method of forming the negative by reduplication is also applied to verbal adjectives in ke-, ki-, kā-, which thereupon usually drop the prefix: kesō, “in pain, sick”; sō-sē, “not sick, well”; but kàngjinsō, “merciful”; kàng-jinso-sē, “merciless.”
Besides this organic negative, there is a periphrastic negative formed by adding the word āvē, “is not”: Ārnàm ābàng āvē, kechèng āvē, kāpetàng āvē, “God has no body, no beginning, no end” (lit. “God his body is not, beginning is not, end is not”). The ā in āvē is the usual ā of relation, and may be dropped: ālàm-āvē “without a word”; làm-vē, “word-less, dumb.” Kā- may be prefixed, forming kāvē, used as an adjectival negative: kopai (Ass. kopāl), “fortune,” kopai-kāvē, “unfortunate.” Another negative used separately, in emphatic assertions, is kālī: tovār nàng kepèk-jī kālī, “the way I will by no means yield to you”; nē-thibuk kālī, “it is not my water-jar.”
The causal verb is formed by prefixing the syllable pe-, pī̆-, pā-[2] to the root: this is probably the verb pī, meaning “to give”; e.g. chō, “eat,” pechō, “feed”; tàng, “finish,” petàng, “cause to finish, end”; ingrum, “be gathered together,” pàngrum, “collect”; vīrdèt, “be lost,” pī-vīrdèt, “destroy.” This syllable takes precedure of che- in reflexive verbs: ē-chainòng ē-pā-chi-thū-koi-làng, “he has caused us to slaughter all our cows”: here ē- is the pronoun of the first person plural inclusive of the addressee; pā-, the causal prefix; chi-, the reflexive particle, indicating that the cattle slaughtered were their own; thū, a verb, “to kill by cutting”; koi, a particle indicating completeness; làng, the tense-suffix.
Compound verbs meet us at every step in Mikir. Roots are heaped together, and the compound is closed by the tense-suffix. Ordinarily the first root determines the general meaning of the compound, the rest being adverbial supplements of modifying force:—chirū-pī-lèm-lo, “he pretended to weep” (chirū, “weep,” lèm, “seem, appear,” pī-lèm, “cause to seem, pretend”); ke-phlòng-dàm ābàng, “somebody who will go and set fire (to the funeral pile)” (phlòng, “kindle,” dàm, “go”); kroi-dun-lo, “she consented” (kroi, “agree, obey,” dun, “go or be with another”); nē do-dun-jī-mā, “will you stay with me?” (do, “stay,” dun, as above). The texts which follow supply a multitude of other examples.
These adverbial supplements to verbs, inserted between the principal verb and the tense-suffixes, are a very characteristic feature of the language, and their proper use is one of the most difficult things for a learner to master. Certain roots take constant supplements of this kind, and are scarcely ever found without them; thus the verbs thī, “die,” ī, “lie down to sleep,” and jàng, “close the eyes,” are almost invariably followed by lòt; rèng, “to live,” takes èt before verbal suffixes; lòng, “to get,” takes lòk; chingbār, “to be equal (in size, weight, height),” and chingdòn, “to be equal in length,” take chit; inghòn, “to love,” and ingjinsō, “to pity,” both take duk; jòk and thèt, both meaning “to escape, get loose,” take phlòt. The complements for verbs meaning “to fall” have been mentioned above (p. 82). These supplements frequently cause the tense-endings to be dispensed with, in which case the action is understood to be in the narrative past or historic present. No doubt most of them were originally separate verbal roots, but are not now capable of being used separately.
The brief outline given above will, it is hoped, enable the reader to apprehend the general construction of the narratives which follow, and display the language in action; for further analysis reference should be made to the notes appended to the texts.