Auxiliary Words

A brief explanation of Fenekere’s auxiliary words and how they work.

To accommodate a broader range of grammar structures and alter the purpose of a sentence, Fenekere has some auxiliary words. Most of them can stand alone in the sentence or clause and provide logical meaning to the whole structure. Many of them often serve time as prefixes as well, lending their meaning to the word that they are attached to (though this meaning alters in some ways, depending on which word they modify).

Particles

The three most important particles are ‘uu, ‘ii and ‘oo.

‘uu is the command or imperative particle. Placing it within a sentence transforms that sentence into an imperative or command. Depending on the structure of the sentence, this could translate into English as “May this happen…” or “You should do…” or in some other similar fashion. Note that it is entirely possible to create a past tense imperative sentence, though it is more common to use the pluperfect form of the verb in this case.

‘ii is the interrogative particle. Placing it within a sentence turns that sentence into a question. If there are one or more pronouns within the sentence, the dominant pronoun becomes the focus of the interrogative voice. “This” or “that” becomes “what”, “they” becomes “who”, “here” becomes “where”, all without altering the morphology of that pronoun. It’s meaning changes without it’s structure changing (the particle takes care of that). The hierarchy of pronoun placement is as follows:

verb > subject > object > adverb > adjective of subject > adjective of object > adjective of adverb > adjective of adjective > object of adverb > verb of adverb > object of recursive verb.

Other ways of designating which pronoun is the subject of the question, that override this hierarchy, include stress or emphasis when speaking, underlining the word in written form, placing the pronoun at the beginning or end of the sentence, or placing the pronoun directly after the interrogative particle.

But, the most conventional method is to simply craft the sentence so that the pronoun of question is the soul noun in the subject clause. Most speakers and writers unconsciously employ two or more of these techniques.

‘oo is the speculative particle. Placing this in a sentence is similar to adding “perhaps” to an English sentence. It means that the speaker is uncertain about the truth of the sentence.

These particles can be mixed, with more than one per sentence. The hierarchy of the particles is as follows: speculative>imperative>interrogative. Meaning that if you included all three in a sentence, it would be similar to asking the English question, “Maybe you should do this?” Including just the imperative and interrogative particles, renders a question like, “Should you do this?” Etc.

Prefixes

Almost all of Fenekere’s prefixes can work as stand alone particles. The way that they behave as such, however, varies from prefix to prefix. Most of the time, however, they are attached to a word and modify that word’s relation to the rest of the sentence. These serve a whole variety of purposes.

For instance, in Fenekere, each verb has an implied preposition embedded within it that takes effect when an object is placed with the verb (they also have implied objects, if no object is provided). Some of these prefixes alter that prepositional meaning. And they may do so in different ways depending on if they are attached to the verb, the object, the subject, an adjective, or an adverb. A detailed description of how this works is provided in an upcoming article titled, “Tricks with Prefixes: Prepositions, Moods, Voices and Aspects”.

Another way in which these prefixes alter words is by describing their relationship to other words of their position. If you have two objects, and you put the prefix for “greater” in front of one of them, then it describes that object as being larger than the other one. Finally, some prefixes will denote number, possession, or some other adjectival property applied to the word.

The way that each prefix interacts with the rest of a sentence is slightly unique to that prefix and is described in its definition.