Paolon

Verbs
Paolonese verbs are conjugated for ...


 * 1. their person: 1., 2. and 3. person


 * 2. their number: singular and plural


 * 3. their tense: present, past and future as well as participle constructions


 * 4. their voice: active and passive


 * 5. their mood: indicative, subjunctive and imperative

Paolon has 4 different conjugations, based on the suffix vowel of the verbal stem. To know which verb belongs in which conjugation, you have to know the verbal apophony rows. With these rows, we can form all infinitives of Paolon which are needed for the conjugations (VS stands for "verbal stem"). With the 3 infinitives, we can now form all other verb forms.


 * 1. For the present tense conjugation, the following prefixes have to be attached to the "Infinitive Present".


 * 2. For the past tense conjugation, the following prefixes have to be attached to the "Infinitive Past".


 * 3. For the future tense conjugation, the following prefixes have to be attached to the "Infinitive Past".

The "imperative" is somewhat different from the other moods. It can only be used in the present and in the future because it gives orders - and the past is already over and unchangeable. So, it would be stupid to try giving orders to something in the past.

The "imperative" is formed by adding the following suffixes to the corresponding infinitive. Participles are a way of giving more detailed information about different time stages - this is needed since Paolon only has 3 actual tenses.

Both the "Infinitive Past" and the "Infinitive Future" can build 3 participles by attaching the following suffixes to them. The "Infinitive Present" can only build the "Participle Present". The reason for this is the definitons of the participles.

The "Participle Past" expresses that something happens BEFORE the reference point (which is the tense of the infinitive).

The "Participle Present" expresses that something happens AT THE SAME TIME AS the reference point.

The "Participle Future" expresses that something happens AFTER the reference point.

It is crucial to understand that all participle information is within the reference tense - if we form participles from the "Infinitive Past", all actions described by the participles will be in the past. Even though something happened "after the past", it is still the past. The same applies for the "Infinitive Future". This is the reason why these infinitves can form all participles. The present is not infinitly large like the past or the future. The present is only a point in time - we couldn't stay within the present when we use "before" or "after" because these words need additional time points. In the case of the present, the actual past and future tense express the ideas of "before" and "after". Here is a visualisation of the tense/participle system: