4: Verbs

Late Dulukian (c.~1405 BCE onwards) has a quite unique way of making verbs, however once you understand it, it's not confusing.

Part 1: Tense & Voice Prefixes

Verbs in Dulukian consist of three main parts:

Tense: this either forms as Past (Ū-), Present (nothing) or Future (Nemsu + root; periphrastically).

Voice: this takes one of three optional voice-prefixes that change how the subject related to the verb. These can stack, which means understanding them can be difficult! They can also form particles on their own, so see 5: Syntax for more information.

• Ma- (active) - marks the action as deliberate or intentional. It doesn't just mean "someone does something", but it specifically flags the subject as acting with agency. E.G: Rad (to provide) and Marad (to give; a deliberate act).

• Ta- (passive) - flips the focus onto the patient (the one the action happens to), rather than the do-er. E.G: Marad (to give; active) vs Tamarad ("receives", literally ' to have-been-given-to').

• Sha - (causative) - marks that the subject causes another party to preform the action, rather than doing it themselves. This forces it to be the form "to X" in a sentence. E.G: Kama ("eat") vs Shakama ("to feed", i.e: cause someone else to eat).

And then the root itself, which is a basic verb. Notably though - '-am' and -'at' are not part of the verb voice system. They are noun deriving suffixes that produce a completely different word class (a noun, not a conjugated verb). See 3: Nounsfor more information.

Part 2: Modals and Copula

Duluk has a single modal verb, "Kashta" - can/could. It's a true lexical verb however, so it conjugates normally and is not a particle as it is in some other languages.

Duluk also has zero-copula: "X is Y" is simple juxtaposition, no verb required to make it formal juxtaposition. Example below: