Mutations

adapted from a 29 Jan 97 post by Joel Mathew Pearson

Nisoratra i Thomas Leigh hoe: Na Tomas Lei siespe ia:

In Malagasy, there is also a group of verbs in which the initial consonant changes to show past, present, and future. Perhaps our "malagasyist" could post a few examples of this as well?

I guess that's me. By "group of verbs", I suppose you're referring to the fact that not all types of predicates mark tense in Malagasy. For instance, what my adviser calls "root passives", and what I call "stative/completive predicates", do not mark tense: They're morphologically inert. This class of predicates includes what we would call adjectives (like "kely" = "little") as well as a number of eventive roots which are perhaps best translated by means of participles (e.g. "tonga" = "arrive, have arrived, be in a state of having arrived", "vaky" = "be broken, have been broken"). As I said, these forms don't mark tense, although aspectually they are generally interpreted as stative or completive:

	Vaky ny vilia		 The dish is broken, The dish was broken
	Hita ny lehilahy	 The man is seen, The man was seen

Complex verbs (i.e. those formed by attaching affixes to roots) are marked for tense, but tense marking involves prefixation and not initial consonant mutation. The prefixes are:

	m- (or null)	non-past
	n- (or no-)	past
	h- (or ho)	future/irrealis

Thus:

	Mipetraka aho		I am sitting, I sit
	Nipetraka aho		I was sitting, I sat
	Hipetraka aho		I will sit

	Mpianatra aho		I am a student, I was a student
	Ho mpianatra aho	I will be a student

Other word classes are also marked for tense: Deictics (words like "here" and "there"), as well as prepositions and the word for "where", are marked for past tense by the prefix t-:

	Eo ambonin'ny latabatra ny boky		The book is on the table
	Teo ambonin'ny latabatra ny boky	The book was on the table
		(lit. "Past-there on-the table the book")

	Aiza ianao no mipetraka?	Where do you live/sit?
	Taiza ianao no nipetraka?	Where(past) did you live/sit?

Finally, the word for "when" has two forms, "oviana" when referring to non-future events and "rahoviana" when referring to future events:

	Oviana ianao no namangy Rabe?		When did you visit Rabe?
	Oviana ianao no mamangy Rabe?		When do you visit Rabe?
	Rahoviana ianao no hamangy Rabe?	When will you visit Rabe?

The element rah- in "rahoviana" reminds me of the word "raha", which means "if" or "whether". So perhaps "rahoviana" is really "if-and-when"".
Fun stuff, eh?

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