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Massimiliano B wrote:Thank you księżycowy !
In spoken Sinhala, verbs don't change to agree with the nouns. There is a simple and an emphatic verb form. In the following sentence, the word in blue is the simple present of the verb "to go": mee bas-ekǝ kalutǝrǝTǝ yanǝwa (literally, "this bus-definite Kalutara-to goes) = "this bus goes to Kalutara". A simple present verb is always at the end of the sentence.
The next sentence has an emphatic present. This kind of verb is used when something is to be emphasized. For example, in this sentence: "It is to Kalutara that this bus goes", the part "to Kalutara" is emphasized. In Sinhala, the emphasized part is usually placed after the verb in its emphatic form. The verb in red is the emphatic form of the verb "to go": mee bas-ekǝ yanne kalutǝrǝTǝ (literally: this bus-definite goes Kalutara-to)= "It is to Kalutara that this bus goes".
Here is another example of emphatic sentence. In this sentence, the emphasized part is the word kohaaTǝ ("where"): mee bas-ekǝ yanne kohaaTǝ dǝ? (literally: This bus-definite goes where-to?) = Where is this bus going?". The last word (dǝ) is the question marker. It turns an affirmative sentence into a question. It is important to remember that the word kohaaTǝ ("where") never occurs with a simple verb. So, a sentence like this: mee bas-ekǝ kohaaTǝ yanǝwa dǝ?, or this: kohaaTǝ mee bas-ekǝ yanǝwa dǝ?, are impossible because they have a simple verb. An answer to the previous sentence could be this: mee bas-ekǝ kalutǝrǝTǝ yanǝwa (this bus to Kalutara goes) = this bus goes to Kalutara.
So, yanǝwa is the simple form, while yanne is the emphatic form. The stem of the verb is the part which precedes -nǝwa.
All these things can be found here: http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/se ... &source=ae, lesson 1. It's a great book !!
Bye
Massimiliano B wrote:Thank you księżycowy !
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