An Overview of Verbs in Mingo

The verb is the most important, and most complicated, of the three parts of speech in Mingo. On this page, we introduce all the basic ideas and terms that you will need to know in order to create and understand verbs in Mingo.

What is a Verb in Mingo?

Verbs are words used to describe what's going on and the way things are. Verbs in Mingo are words which refer to actions (hatáwë -- he is swimming), events (waayashêta't -- he fell down), conditions (hánêyés -- he is tall) and states of affairs (ostëötyô -- it's raining).

Basic Structure of the Verb

Now that we know what verbs are, we can talk about their structure. All verbs in Mingo are composed of three basic parts -- a verb prefix, a verb base and a verb suffix. Each of the three pieces contributes important information to the verb as a whole.

We will start in the middle with the verb base. The verb base is what gives the verb its basic meaning, like "swim", "fall down", "be tall" or "be raining" in the examples above. The verb base is what you look up in the dictionary when you want to know how to say something. When we talk about verb bases we will always put a dash on either side of them -- for example, the verb base -atawë- swim, take a bath. These dashes show that you cannot use the verb base as a word on its own. Instead, you always must add a prefix onto the beginning and a suffix onto the end. The dashes stand in for the missing prefix and suffix.

There are many different verb suffixes which get attached to the ends of the verb base. Each if these verb suffixes gives a different "view" of the basic meaning expressed by the verb base. For instance, some suffixes add a meaning of "happened in the past," "happens all the time" or "is happening right now".

The last piece of the verb puzzle is the verb prefix. The basic role of the verb prefix is to tell you who is involved with what is going on -- for instance, "they are singing," "he is talking to her" or "you gave it to us".

As we will see, we will often want to talk about the verb base together with the verb suffix as a single unit, as opposed to the verb prefix. We call this combination of the verb base plus the verb suffix the "verb stem".

The diagram below shows the main parts of the verb in Mingo. The same color scheme is used in all the diagrams throughout the grammar, so you remember that verb prefixes are always red (tkwëhtææ'ê'), verb bases are always green (kanëhtaikhö') and verb suffixes are always blue (oöya'ê').

Now that we know the basic parts of the verb, we can look at how they are put together to form whole words. The first thing to look at is how to combine verb bases and verb suffixes into verb stems.