Nominalizations and the n- and w- prefixes
Nominalizations can be derived from all verbs with the suffixes-to ‘circumstance nominalizer’ and-Ø ‘general/action nominalizer’. Like most nouns, these nominalizations can bear possessive morphology (see Table 1 above for the set of possessive prefixes). If the nominalized verb is transitive, the possessor of the nominalization will be the original O:
(1)
With to-nominalizations, possession by the original A appears to be impossible. With Ø-nominalizations, on the other hand, possession by the original A becomes possible if an intervening prefix n- ‘a: poss’ co-occurs:
(2)
Intransitive verbs can also be to- and Ø-nominalized. The possessor of the resulting nominalization will be the original S, since it is the only available participant. However, SA verb nominalizations can be distinguished from SO verb nominalizations in that the former take an extra prefix w-‘SA’ whereas the latter do not.
(3)
(4)
As in the case of the imperative forms, there is a structural parallelism between A and SA, and between O and SO, in spite of the different morphemes that actually occur: SO is treated like O in that both can possess directly a to-or Ø-nominalized form of the verb, and SA and A are treated alike in that both need an intervening prefix (w- and n- respectively) on a nominalized form of the verb before they can possess it.
Table 2. Structural similarities in the possession of nominalizations.
The w- prefix distinguishes SA from SO verbs in yet another verb form: the participle/narrative past tense, indicated by a circumfix, t--se.SA verbs, unlike SO, take an extra w- after the t- (which results in tG-w-):
(5)
(6)
Transitive verbs in the t--se form do not take any extra morphology:
(7)
The original meaning of the t--se form (still a possible one) seems to have been that of a past participle. With transitive verbs, it refers to the O; with intransitive verbs, to the S. There is an obvious similarity with the previous pattern (for to or Ø-nominalizations): an O/SO-oriented past participle can be derived without any extra prefix, whereas an SA-oriented past participle needs the presence of the intervening prefix w- ‘SA’.
