Verb Types and Word-Order
There are three types of verbs in Berlean; action verbs, process verbs, and state verbs. Action verbs are generally transitive, taking on a direct object marked with the accusative case in addition to its subject. The basic word-order associated with such verbs is VSO. Process verbs and state verbs, on the other hand, are intransitive; their basic associated word-order is SV. Process verbs can generally take an optional post-verbal adjunct marked by the locative case and functioning as a sort of object; the word-order when a post-verbal adjunct or adverbial is present is then VSO. State verbs include all adjectives and are always associated with SV word-order unless a valency-increasing suffix is present allowing it to take on an adjunct; there are, however, some exceptions of stative verbs that behave syntactically like action verbs. Some verbs may fit into more than one verb type, and many can change verb types by taking on suffixes associated with valency and aspect. When there is an accusative-marked personal pronoun present, it suffixes to the verb and the word-order is VOS.
Action Verb (V-S-na-O)
Ex) ဇီခ (ziek) – “to eat”
ဇီခ ဇေါင ငတ ပြတ။
(ziek zarn na bla)
– eat child ACC rice
– “The child is eating rice.”
Ex) ငဧု (nir) – “to see, look”
ငဧုးငါကဥ ပဧ။
(nir-nagh bie)
– “I see you.”
Process Verb (S-V or V-S-zie-O)
Ex) ခတု (kar) – “to go”
ဇေါင ခတု။
(zarn kar)
– child go
– “The child is going.”
ခတု ဇေါင ဇဧ ကေီမ။
(kar zarn zie khirm)
– go child LOC home
– “The child is going home.”
State Verb (S-V), *(V-S-na-O)
Ex) ရီမ (liem) – “to be good”
ဇေါင ရီမ။
(zarn liem)
– child good
– “The child is good.”
Ex) ဂဝု (gur) – “to love”
ဂဝုးငါယြဥ ဝါရဥ။
(gur-navlr alr)
– “They love us.”
Mixed Verb
Ex) ဖဇဥ (prz) – “to be smart, have knowledge of”
ဇေါင ဖဇဥ။
(zarn prz)
– child smart
– “The child is smart”
ဖဇဥ ဇေါင ဇဧ ပရီငငါကဥ။
(prz zarn zie brliennagh)
– know child LOC berlean
– “The child knows Berlean.”
ဖဇပါကဥ ဇေါင ဇဧ ပရီငငါကဥ။
(przbagh zarn zie brliennagh)
– know.become child LOC berlean
– “The child is learning Berlean.”
Finiteness and Relative Clauses
| Participle | Partial Relative | Full Relative | |
| Nominal | - | - | ငါဂဥ... (nargr...) ငတု... (nar...) |
| Adjectival | မဧး (mie-) | မဧ... (mie...) | မီဂဥ... (mirgr...) မဧု... (mir...) |
| Adverbial | ဇဧး (zie-) | ဇဧ... (zie) | ဇီဂဥ... (zirgr...) ဇဧု... (zir...) |
The basic finite and non-finite form of a verb is the verb root itself. There is no inflection for agreement or tense. There are, however, participle forms of the verb, as well as specific particles that are used to form relative clauses. If the verb lacks any arguments and is used as a participle, it can take the prefix mie-, if it modifies a noun phrase, or the prefix zie-, if it modifies a verb phrase. These prefixes are also used with state verbs or adjectives to either modify a noun phrase or turn them into adverbs. Adjectives can alternatively directly modify a noun phrase without prefixation by being placed directly in front of the noun it modifies.
Verb ဇီခ (ziek) “to eat”
Finite Form:
ဇီခ ဇေါင ငတ ပြတ။
(ziek zarn na bla)
“The child eats rice.”
Infinitive Form:
ရှာအဥ ဇေါင ဇီခ ငတ ပြတ။
(lhath zarn ziek na bla)
“The child wants to eat rice.”
Adjectival Participle:
ပြတ မဧးဇီခ
(bla mie-ziek)
“Rice to eat.”
Adverbial Participle:
ဇီခ ဇေါင ငတ ပြတ ဇဧးစေိမ။
(ziek zarn na bla zie-surm)
“The child eats rice while sitting.”
Adjective ရီမ (liem) “to be good”
Finite Form:
ဇေါင ရီမ။
(zarn liem)
“The child is good.”
Infinitive Form:
ရှာအဥ ဇေါင ရီမပါကဥ။
(lhath zarn liembagh)
“The child wants to be good.”
Full Adjectival Form:
ဇေါင မဧးရီမ။
(zarn mie-liem)
“The good child.”
Short Adjectival Form:
ရီမ ဇေါင။
(liem zarn)
“The good child.”
Adverbial Form:
ဂြတု ဇေါင ဇဧးရီမ။
(glar zarn zie-liem)
“The child listens well.”
Particles are used with the verbs to form relative clauses. In Berlean, there are two types of relative clauses; partial relative clauses that contain an object (for action verbs) or an adjunct (process verbs), and full relative clauses that contain a subject. The nominal full relative clause is used with verbs that take a verb phrase as their object argument. The partial relative clause markers are treated as separate particles and not prefixes because adjuncts can occur between the marker and the verb. The full relative particles also have contracted forms where -gr is dropped.
Verb ဇီခ (ziek) “to eat”
ဇေါင မဧ ဇီခ ငတ ပြတ။
(zarn mie ziek na bla)
“The child eating rice.”
ဇေါင မဧ ကေီမ စီရတု ဇီခ ငတ ပြတ။
(zarn mie khirm sielar ziek na bla)
“The child eating rice at home.”
ဇီခ ဇေါင ငတ ပြတ ဇဧ ငြာကဥ ငတ ဒီငစဥ။
(ziek zarn na bla zie nlagh na dirnsr)
“The child eats rice while watching TV.”
ပြတ၊ မီဂဥ ဇေါင ဇီခ။
(bla, mirgr zarn ziek)
“The rice that the child eats.”
ဇီခ ဇေါင ငတ ပြတ၊ ဇီဂဥ မာထ မဧု စြိယဥ။
(ziek zarn na bla, zirgr marmr mir slurf)
“The child eats rice while his mother sleeps.”
ရမ ပဧ၊ ငါဂဥ ဇီခ ဇေါင ငတ ပြတ။
(lrm bie, nargr ziek zarn na bla)
“I know that the child eats rice.”
Verb ခတု (kar) “to go, walk”
ဇေါင မဧ ခတု ဇဧ ကေီမ။
(zarn mie kar zie khirm)
“The child going home.”
ဇေါင မဧ ဂငှဧု ခတု ဇဧ ကေီမ။
(zarn mie grnhir kar zie khirm)
“The child going home today.”
ခတု ဇေါင ဇဧ ကေီမ ဇဧ အာကဥ ငတ ဝီမဂခ။
(kar zarn zie khirm zie thagh na irmgrk)
“The child walks home while listening to music.”
ခတု ဇေါင ဇဧ ကေီမ၊ ဇီဂဥ ကတုးငတု မာထ မဧု။
(kar zarn zie khirm, zirgr khar-nar marmr mir)
“The child goes home when his mom calls him.”
ရမ ပဧ၊ ငါဂဥ ခတု ဇေါင ဇဧ ကေီမ။
(lrm bie, nargr kar zarn zie khirm)
“I know that the child walks home.”
TAM Auxiliaries and Affixes
The following table displays the basic TAM markers and auxiliaries of Berlean and their constructions.
| Auxiliary/Affix | Construction | TAM/Meaning |
| - | (V) | unmarked, imperative |
| မ- (mr-) | Affix-V | negation prefix |
| မှဧု (mhir) | Aux + V | negative imperative particle |
| မှာခ (mhak) | V + Aux | negative telic particle (indicates that a goal has not been accomplished) |
| ဝီရ (yel) | (S) Aux + V | emphatic particle |
| ဝီခ (yek) | (S) Aux + V | negative emphatic |
| -ရဥ (-lr) | V-Affix | perfective suffix |
| ငီမ (niem) | (S) Aux + V | perfective particle |
| ငီခ (niek) | (S) Aux + V | negative perfective particle |
| ငီမ ဇဧး (niem zie-) | Aux + ဇဧးV (S) | progressive construction |
| ငီခ ဇဧး (niek zie-) | Aux + ဇဧးV (S) | negative progressive construction |
| ယြဥ₁ (flr) | Aux + V(S) | future, epistemic modal |
| ယြဥ₂ (flr) | Aux + (S)V | deontic, dynamic (ability) modal |
| မြှဥ₁ (mlhr) | Aux + V(S) | negative future, epistemic modal |
| မြှဥ₂ (mlhr) | Aux + (S)V | deontic, dynamic (ability) modal |
| ပါယဥ (barf) | Aux + V(S) | future modal |
| ရှာအဥ (lhath) | Aux + (S)V | to want (dynamic) |
| မီခ ဇဧး (miek zie-) | Aux + (S) ဇဧးV | to be able to (dynamic) |
| မာရခ (malrk) | Aux + V(S) | possibly, might (epistemic) |
| မောယြဥ (marvlr) | Aux + V | surely, certainly (epistemic, deontic) |
| ဇေါငီခ (zarniek) | Aux + (S)V | may, allowed to, can (deontic, dynamic) |
| ဇေိခ ဇီမဥ (zurk zirmr) | Aux + V | must, have to (deontic) |
Negation and Aspect Markers
Unmarked:
An unmarked verb generally acts as a basic tenseless verb. It can also be used as an imperative.
ဇီခ ဇေါင ငတ ပြတ။
(ziek zarn na bla)
“The child eats rice.”
ဇီခ ငတ ပြတ။
(ziek na bla)
“Eat the rice!”
ခတု ဇေါင ဇဧ ကေီမ။
(kar zarn zie khirm)
“The child goes home.”
ခတု ဇဧ ကေိမ။
(kar zie khirm)
“Go home!”
မ- (mr-):
မ- (mr-) is the basic way of negation in Berlean and is prefixed to the verb. Compare the Burmese prefix မ (ma) and Proto-Sino-Tibetan *ma (“no, not”).
မဇီခ ဇေါင ငတ ပြတ။
(mrziek zarn na bla)
“The child doesn’t eat the rice.”
မဂတု ဇေါင ဇဧ ကေီမ။
(mrgar zarn zie khirm)
“The child doesn’t go home.”
မှဧု (mhir):
မှဧု (mhir) is a fusion of the prefix မ- (mr-) and verb စဧု (sir) “to do, make.” It is used to mark the negative imperative and comes before the verb.
မှဧု ဇီခ ငတ ပြတ။
(mhir ziek na bla)
“Don’t eat the rice!”
မှဧု ခတု ဇဧ ကေီမ။
(mhir kar zie khirm)
“Don’t go home!”
မှာခ (mhak):
မှာခ (mhak) is a negation particle placed after the verb that indicates that a goal has not been completed. It is generally used with verbs of sensing and verbs that involve a goal being reached. မှာခ (mhak) also has two contracted suffix forms: when affixing to a verb ending in a vowel, it contracts as -မခ (-mrk); otherwise, it contracts as -ခ (-rk).
ငဧု မှာခ ပဧ ငတ ဒီငစဥ။
(nir mhak bie na dirnsr)
“I am unable to see the TV.”
ငေီမခ ပဧ ငတ ဒီငစဥ။
(nirmrk bie na dirnsr)
“I am unable to see the TV.”
ခတု မှာခ ဇေါင ဇဧ ကေီမ။
(kar mhak zarn zie khirm)
“The child was unable to make it home.”
ခောမခ ဇေါင ဇဧ ကေီမ။
(karmrk zarn zie khirm)
“The child was unable to make it home.”
ဝီရ (yel) and ဝီခ (yek):
ဝီရ (yel) and ဝီခ (yek) are the affirmative and negative forms of the copula in Berlean and can be used emphatically with a verb. They are also used in focus constructions, which will be further analyzed in a later section. The negative form is the result of a fusion of ဝီရ (yel) and -ခ (-rk), a contracted form of မှာခ (mhak). The subject, in this case, is always placed at the beginning of the sentence.
ပဧ ဝီရ ဇီခ ငတ ပြတ။
(bie yel ziek na bla)
“I do eat rice!”
ပဧ ဝီခ ဇီခ ငတ ပြတ။
(bie yek ziek na bla)
“I do NOT eat rice!”
ပဧ ဝီရ ခတု ဇဧ ကေီမ။
(bie yel kar zie khirm)
“I do walk home!”
ပဧ ဝီခ ခတု ဇဧ ကေီမ။
(bie yek kar zie khirm)
“I do NOT walk home!”
-ရဥ (-lr):
-ရဥ (-lr) is the basic perfective suffix in Berlean and is cognate with the word ခြဝ (kluo) meaning “to stop, finish” (see Proto-Tibeto-Burman *s-grwal). -ရဥ (-lr) cannot be negated through the မ- (mr-) prefix; instead, ငီခ (niek) is used to indicate the negative perfective.
ဇီဂြဥ ဇေါင ငတ ပြတ။
(zieglr zarn na bla)
“The child ate the rice.”
ခောရဥ ဇေါင ဇဧ ကေီမ။
(karlr zarn zie khirm)
“The child went home.”
ငီမ (niem) and ငီခ (niek):
ငီမ (niem) and ငီခ (niek) are the affirmative and negative forms of the existential verb meaning “to exist, have.” It can be combined with a verb to carry a perfective meaning and can even be used in conjunction with the perfective suffix -ရဥ (-lr). In this case, similarly to the emphatic copular constructions, the subject is placed at the beginning of the sentence.
ဇေါင ငီမ ဇီခ ငတ ပြတ။
(zarn niem ziek na bla)
“The child ate the rice.”
ဇေါင ငီခ ဇီခ ငတ ပြတ။
(zarn niek ziek na bla)
“The child didn’t eat the rice.”
ဇေါင ငီမ ဇီဂြဥ ငတ ပြတ။
(zarn niem zieglr na bla)
“The child ate the rice.”
ဇေါင ငီခ ဇီဂြဥ ငတ ပြတ။
(zarn niek zieglr na bla)
“The child didn’t eat the rice.”
ဇေါင ငီမ ခတု ဇဧ ကေီမ။
(zarn niem kar zie khirm)
“The child went home.”
ဇေါင ငီခ ခတု ဇဧ ကေီမ။
(zarn niek kar zie khirm)
“The child didn’t go home.”
ဇေါင ငီမ ခောရဥ ဇဧ ကေီမ။
(zarn niem karlr zie khirm)
“The child went home.”
ဇေါင ငီခ ခောရဥ ဇဧ ကေီမ။
(zarn niek karlr zie khirm)
“The child didn’t go home.”
ငီမ ဇဧး (niem zie-) and ငီခ ဇဧး (niek zie-):
When ငီမ (niem) and ငီခ (niek) are combined with an adverbial participle, it acts as a progressive aspect construction. In this case, the subject comes after the verb.
ငီမ ဇဧးဇီခ ဇေါင ငတ ပြတ။
(niem zie-ziek zarn na bla)
“The child is eating rice.”
ငီခ ဇဧးဇီခ ဇေါင ငတ ပြတ။
(niek zie-ziek zarn na bla)
“The child isn’t eating rice.”
ငီမ ဇဧးခတု ဇေါင ဇဧ ကေီမ။
(niem zie-kar zarn zie khirm)
“Thie child is walking home.”
ငီခ ဇဧးခတု ဇေါင ဇဧ ကေီမ။
(niek zie-kar zarn zie khirm)
“Thie child isn’t walking home.”
Modal Markers
Outer and Inner Modality:
Berlean modals can syntactically be distinguished into two categories: outer modals, which includes epistemic and future modals, and inner modals, which includes deontic and dynamic modals. This syntactic distinction arises from the placement of the lexical verb in relation to the subject of the sentence. Typically, outer modals must come right next to the lexical verb, and so the subject comes after the lexical verb. Inner modals, on the other hand, allow the lexical verb to be farther away, and so the subject comes before the lexical verb.
Outer ယြဥ (flr) and မြှဥ (mlhr):
ယြဥ (flr) as a fully semantic word means “to solve” or “to know how to,” and is likely cognate with Burmese ဖြေ (hpre, “to untie; to answer; to ease; to absolve”) and Chinese 解 (Old Chinese: *kˤreʔ). As an outer modal, it fuctions as both a future and an epistemic marker meaning “to be going to” or “will.” မြှဥ (mlhr) is the negated form, a fusion of the ယြဥ (flr) and the negation prefix မ- (mr-).
ယြဥ ဇီခ ဇေါင ငတ ပြတ။
(flr ziek zarn na bla)
“The child will eat the rice.”
မြှဥ ဇီခ ဇေါင ငတ ပြတ။
(mlhr ziek zarn na bla)
“The child won’t eat the rice.”
ယြဥ ခတု ဇေါင ဇဧ ကေီမ။
(flr kar zarn zie khirm)
“The child will go home.”
မြှဥ ခတု ဇေါင ဇဧ ကေီမ။
(mlhr kar zarn zie khirm)
“The child won’t go home.”
Inner ယြဥ (flr) and မြှဥ (mlhr):
As an inner modal, ယြဥ (flr) functions dynamic and deontic modal meaning “to be able to” or “can.”
ယြဥ ဇေါင ဇီခ ငတ ပြတ။
(flr zarn ziek na bla)
“The child can eat the rice.”
မြှဥ ဇေါင ဇီခ ငတ ပြတ။
(mlhr zarn ziek na bla)
“The child can’t eat the rice.”
ယြဥ ဇေါင ခတု ဇဧ ကေီမ။
(flr zarn kar zie khirm)
“The child can go home.”
မြှဥ ဇေါင ခတု ဇဧ ကေီမ။
(mlhr zarn kar zie khirm)
“The child can’t go home.”
ပါယဥ (barf):
ပါယဥ (barf) is a prospective future marker and can only be used as an outer modal.
ပါယဥ ဇီခ ဇေါင ငတ ပြတ။
(barf ziek zarn na bla)
“The child’s going to eat rice.”
ပါယဥ မဇီခ ဇေါင ငတ ပြတ။
(barf mrziek zarn na bla)
“The child isn’t going to eat rice.”
ပါယဥ ခတု ဇေါင ဇဧ ကေီမ။
(barf kar zarn zie khirm)
“The child’s going to go home.”
ပါယဥ မဂတု ဇေါင ဇဧ ကေီမ။
(barf mrgar zarn zie khirm)
“The child isn’t going to go home.”
ရှာအဥ (lhath):
ရှာအဥ (lhath) is an inner modal with expressing a desire and is often translated as “to want” or “would like to.”
ရှာအဥ ဇေါင ဇီခ ငတ ပြတ။
(lhath zarn ziek na bla)
“The child wants to eat rice.”
မရှာအဥ ဇေါင ဇီခ ငတ ပြတ။
(mrlhath zarn ziek na bla)
“The child doesn’t want to eat rice.”
ရှာအဥ ဇေါင ခတု ဇဧ ကေီမ။
(lhath zarn kar zie khirm)
“The child wants to go home.”
မရှာအဥ ဇေါင ခတု ဇဧ ကေီမ။
(mrlhath zarn kar zie khirm)
“The child doesn’t want to go home.”
မီခ ဇဧး (miek zie-):
မီခ ဇဧး (miek zie-) is an ability modal construction meaning “can” or “to be able to.” The main verb that takes the zie- prefix can either be in the inner or outer position; if it is in the outer position, then miek has an epistemic possibility reading.
မီခ ဇဧးဇီခ ဇေါင ငတ ပြတ။
(miek zieziek zarn na bla)
“The child might eat rice.”
မမီခ ဇဧးဇီခ ဇေါင ငတ ပြတ။
(mrmiek zieziek zarn na bla)
“The child might not eat the rice.”
မီခ ဇေါင ဇဧးဇီခ ငတ ပြတ။
(miek zarn zieziek na bla)
“The child is able to eat rice.”
မမီခ ဇေါင ဇဧးဇီခ ငတ ပြတ။
(mrmiek zarn zieziek na bla)
“The child is unable to eat the rice.”
မီခ ဇဧးဂတု ဇေါင ဇဧ ကေီမ။
(miek ziegar zarn zie khirm)
“The child might go home.”
မမီခ ဇဧးဂတု ဇေါင ဇဧ ကေီမ။
(mrmiek ziegar zarn zie khirm)
“The child might not go home.”
မီခ ဇေါင ဇဧးဂတု ဇဧ ကေီမ။
(miek zarn ziegar zie khirm)
“The child is able to go home.”
မမီခ ဇေါင ဇဧးဂတု ဇဧ ကေီမ။
(mrmiek zarn ziegar zie khirm)
“The child is unable to go home.”
မာရခ (malrk):
မာရခ (malrk) is an epistemic possibility modal that functions as an adverb placed before the verb and means “probably” or “likely.” It is commonly used in conjuction with outer ယြဥ (flr) and မြှဥ (mlhr).
မာရခ ယြဥ ဇီခ ဇေါင ငတ ပြတ။
(malrk flr ziek zarn na bla)
“The child will probably eat rice.”
မာရခ မြှဥ ဇီခ ဇေါင ငတ ပြတ။
(malrk mlhr ziek zarn na bla)
“The child probably won’t eat the rice.”
မာရခ ယြဥ ခတု ဇေါင ဇဧ ကေီမ။
(malrk flr kar zarn zie khirm)
“The child will probably go home.”
မာရခ မြှဥ ခတု ဇေါင ဇဧ ကေီမ။
(malrk mlhr kar zarn zie khirm)
“The child probably won’t go home.”
မောယြဥ (marvlr):
မောယြဥ (marvlr) is a modal that expresses certainty and is often translated as “certainly,” “surely,” or “absolutely.” It functions as an adverb and is used in conjunction with both inner and outer modals.
မောယြဥ ယြဥ ဇီခ ဇေါင ငတ ပြတ။
(marvlr flr ziek zarn na bla)
“The child definitely will eat rice.”
မောယြဥ မြှဥ ဇီခ ဇေါင ငတ ပြတ။
(marvlr mlhr ziek zarn na bla)
“The child definitely won’t eat the rice.”
မောယြဥ ဇေိခ ဇေါင ဇီမဥ ဇီခ ငတ ပြတ။
(marvlr zurk zarn zirmr ziek na bla)
“The child absolutely must eat rice.”
မောယြဥ ဇေိခ ဇေါင ဇီမဥ မဇီခ ငတ ပြတ။
(marvlr zurk zarn zirmr mrziek na bla)
“The child absolutely must not eat the rice.”
မောယြဥ ယြဥ ခတု ဇေါင ဇဧ ကေီမ။
(marvlr flr kar zarn zie khirm)
“The child surely will go home.”
မောယြဥ မြှဥ ခတု ဇေါင ဇဧ ကေီမ။
(marvlr mlhr kar zarn zie khirm)
“The child surely won’t go home.”
မောယြဥ ဇေိခ ဇေါင ဇီမဥ ခတု ဇဧ ကေီမ။
(marvlr zurk zarn zirmr kar zie khirm)
“The child absolutely must go home.”
မောယြဥ ဇေိခ ဇေါင ဇီမဥ မဂတု ဇဧ ကေီမ။
(marvlr zurk zarn zirmr mrgar zie khirm)
“The child absolutely must not go home.”
ဇေါငီခ (zarniek):
ဇေါငီခ (zarniek) is an inner modal and can have both deontic possibility and circumstantial ability meanings such as “may” or “can.” It is negated with the negative imperative marker.
ဇေါငီခ ဇေါင ဇီခ ငတ ပြတ။
(zarniek zarn ziek na bla)
“The child may/can eat the rice.”
မှဧု ဇေါငီခ ဇေါင ဇီခ ငတ ပြတ။
(mhir zarniek zarn ziek na bla)
“The child is not allowed to eat the rice.”
ဇေါငီခ ဇေါင ခတု ဇဧ ကေီမ။
(zarniek zarn kar zie khirm)
“The child may/can go home.”
မှဧု ဇေါငီခ ဇေါင ခတု ဇဧ ကေီမ။
(mhir zarniek zarn kar zie khirm)
“The child is not allowed to go home.”
ဇေိခ ဇီမဥ (zurk zirmr):
ဇေိခ ဇီမဥ (zurk zirmr) is a strong deontic necessity marker meaning “must” or “have to.” It is negated with a negation prefix on internal verb.
ဇေိခ ဇေါင ဇီမဥ ဇီခ ငတ ပြတ။
(zurk zarn zirmr ziek na bla)
“The child must eat rice.”
ဇေိခ ဇေါင ဇီမဥ မဇီခ ငတ ပြတ။
(zurk zarn zirmr mrziek na bla)
“The child must not eat the rice.”
ဇေိခ ဇေါင ဇီမဥ ခတု ဇဧ ကေီမ။
(zurk zarn zirmr kar zie khirm)
“The child must go home.”
ဇေိခ ဇေါင ဇီမဥ မဂတု ဇဧ ကေီမ။
(zurk zarn zirmr mrgar zie khirm)
“The child must not go home.”
Passive and Causative Voices
The following table displays the different passive and causative voice suffixes. The suffix -ပါကဥ -bagh is realized as -ယာကဥ -vagh when attached to a root ending in a vowel and as -ဖာကဥ -pagh when attached to a root ending in a voiceless stop. The suffix စဧု -sir is realized as ဇဧု -zir when attached to a root ending in a vowel.
| Transitive | Intransitive | |||
| Suffix | Construction | Suffix | Construction | |
| Passive (Stative) | -ငီမ (-niem) | V-ငီမ Nᵢ (ဇဧ-Nₖ) "Nᵢ is V-ed (by Nₖ)" | - | - |
| Passive (Dynamic) | -ပါကဥ (-bagh) | V-ပါကဥ Nᵢ (ဇဧ-Nₖ) "Nᵢ gets V-ed (by Nₖ)" | - | - |
| Causative | -စဧု (-sir) | V-စဧု Nᵢ ငတ-Nₖ (ဇဧ-Nⱼ) "Nᵢ is forced to V Nₖ" "Nⱼ makes Nᵢ V Nₖ" | -ပါကဥ (-bagh) | N Adj-ပါကဥ "N becomes Adj" |
| V-ပါကဥ Nᵢ ဇဧ-Nₖ "Nₖ makes Nᵢ Adj" |
||||
Verb ဇီခ (ziek) “to eat”
ဇီခ → ဇခီးငီမ
(ziek) → (ziek-niem)
“to eat” → “to be eaten”
ဇီခ → ဇီခဖာကဥ
(ziek) → (ziekpagh)
“to eat” → “to get eaten”
ဇီခ → ဇီခစဧု
(ziek) → (zieksir)
“to eat” → “to make one eat”
Adjective ရီမ (liem) “to be good”
ရီမ → ရီမပါကဥ
(liem) → (liembagh)
“good” → “to get better”
Verb ခတု (kar) “to go, walk”
ခတု → ခောယာကဥ
(kar) → (karvagh)
“to go” → “to make sb go”
A second causative construction exists that is more historic in nature. There are many causative pairs of verbs formed from what was historically an /s-/ prefix. The /s/ debuccalized and affected the phonation of the initial consonant of the root. The /s-/ causative form is different from the -sir form as it implies a degree of volition from the causee. See the following comparison:
ဇီခ → ဇီခစဧု
(ziek) → (zieksir)
“to eat” → “to make eat”
ဇီခ → စီခ
(ziek) → (siek)
“to eat” → “to feed”
ငဧု → ငေီဇဧု
(nir) → (nirzir)
“to look” → “to make look”
ငဧု → ငှဧု
(nir) → (nhir)
“to look” → “to show”
ဂြတု → ဂြောဇဧု
(glar) → (glarzir)
“to listen” → “to make listen”
ဂြတု → ခြတု
(glar) → (klar)
“to listen” → “to show”
Equative and Existential Verbs
Berlean has two verbs that equate to the verb “to be” in English. The equative verb, yel and its negative form yek, is a copular verb used only in sentences with a noun compliment (e.g. ဝတု ဝီရ မာထ မီယဥ ar yel marmr mirf “She is my mother”). The existential verb, niem and its negative form niek, is used in existential clauses and for expressing possession.
The basic constructions for equative phrases are the following:
NP yel NP = “NP is NP”
NP yek NP = “NP is not NP”
The basic constructions for existential phrases are the following:
niem NP zie NP (PostP) = “NP is in/at/etc. NP”
niek NP zie NP (PostP) = “NP is not in/at/etc. NP”
When the existential verb is used for possession, the zie-phrase is topicalized and placed at the front of the verb with its overt case-marking dropped. This yields the following constructions:
NP niem NP = “NP has NP”
NP niek NP = “NP does not have NP”
This possessive construction can also be used as an alternative to mie for possession within a DP; however, unlike mie, using this construction conveys an indefinite or partitive meaning on the possessed noun.
ဇီခ ပဧ ငီမ ကင ငတ ဝေါမဧု။
Ziek bie niem khrn na armir.
“One of my dogs eats chicken.”
ဇငှဧု ပဧ ငီမ ငဧု ငတ ဂဧ ငီမ ပြငှါခဥ။
Zrnhir bie niem nir na gie niem blnhark.
“I saw a friend of yours yesterday.”
Reduplication and Triplication
When an action or process verb is reduplicated, it acts as a sort of telic or perfective aspect, emphasizing the completion of the action or process in its entirety. In the case of a stative verb, reduplication can either function as a basic adverbial construction, or the reduplicated stative verb takes on the meaning of “extremely X” or “entirely X.” Verbal reduplication rules are the same as nominal reduplication rules.
Verb ဇီခ (ziek) “to eat”
ဇီခထ ဇေါင ငတ ပြတ။
(ziegziek zarn na bla)
“The child (successfully) ate all of the rice”
ရှီဖ မတု ဇီခထ။
(lhiep mar ziegziek)
“Hurry up and eat!”
Adjective ရီမ (liem) “to be good”
ဇေါင ရီမထ။
(zarn liemliem)
“The child is very well-behaved.”
ဇီခ ရီမထ ဇေါင ငတ ပြတ။
(ziek liemliem zarn na bla)
“The child eats very well.”
Triplication of stative verbs is also possible for added emphasis.
Verb ဂဝု (gur) “to love”
ဂေိထထးငါကဥ ပဧ။
(gurgurgur-nagh bie)
“I love you soooo much!”
Adjective မြှတု (mlhar) “to be cute”
မြှောထထ ဂဥ ငီဇဥ။
(mlharmlhrmlhr gr nirz)
“That girl is soooo beautiful!”