As the first of two sections on verbal morphology, this section gives a brief structural overview of the Skerre verb. It then discusses the inflectional morphology found on verbs in Skerre — inflectional morphology in this case referring just to tense-aspect-mood (TAM) marking and some pronominal inflection. This section is organized as follows:
The minimal Skerre verb is just a verb stem. However, a great many verbs are inflected with a tense-aspect-mood (TAM) prefix. Furthermore, all transitive verbs (those with two core nominal arguments) also are required to have a transitive suffix, and may take pronominal object suffix (these two are not always clearly separable, so they will be treated together). Additionally, there are prefixes that can added to "base" stems that derive new verbs stems. These will be referred to collectively as derivational verbal affixes.
The Skerre verb has the following structure (parentheses denote non-obligatory elements):
| (TAM Marker)- | (Derivational) | -Stem | -(Transitivity/Object Marker) |
This section will examine three of these four possible parts of the Skerre verb in closer detail; the next section will discuss the derivational morphology.
The verb stem is invariable for an overwhelming majority of verbs. However, some of the common verbs, like quos, come, go, are irregular, and change their forms (quite suppletively) to "agree" with the TAM marker, as in the following.
Quos-ha go:I=1SG.NOM I go
Quoquos-ha PROG~go:I=1SG.NOM I'm going
Ewor-ha PFV-go:II=1SG.NOM I went
Rotsaa-ha FUT-go:III=1SG.NOM I'm about to go
Kitsaa-ha IRR-go:III=1SG.NOM I'm about to go
Quot! go:IMP Go!
This verb is also unique in the language for having a dedicated imperative form. All other verbs use the base form.
There are four overt TAM prefixes (and one covert category), given below with their conventional name, and rough English equivalent.
| TAM marker | Name | Rough English Equivalent |
| (null) | Base | Xs (in its most common use) |
| e- | Perfective (PFV) | X-ed |
| ka- | Progressive (PROG) | is X-ing |
| ro- | Future (FUT) | is about to X |
| ki- | Irrealis (IRR) | would X |
These can be shown to be actual affixes, since they undergo glide insertion, as in eyahor, [e + ahor], ran. This property also allows for there to be a distinction between vowel-initial verbal stems and glottal stop-initial verb stems.
One and only one of these TAM markers can appear with a given verb. From a certain point of view, all verbs appear to have a TAM marker; however, the view taken here is that the verbs which appear uninflected are truly uninflected.
The following section details the various differences among the TAM markers.
The base form (no affix) has several uses. Its most common use for as a verb denoting events that have no particular time frame, especially those that are either states or the results of other actions. This form is also used for used for imperatives.
The perfective's (e-) viewpoint is one that is external, and so the event is viewed in its entirety. Because of its external viewpoint, it is frequently used to talk about past events, though there is no inherent temporal meaning in the perfective.
The progressive (ka-) describes actions that are or were ongoing processes (there is no time distinction in the progressive). Put another way, it views actions internally. As such, it frequently talks about present events, though it does not have to.
Some more common verbs do not form their progressive with the prefix ka-, but rather through CV reduplication. This is different from the CVV reduplication of nouns in that the vowel is never long. Some examples (not an exhaustive list):
| Base | Progressive | Translation |
| yas | yayas | give |
| san | sasan | believe |
| sats | sasats | think |
| quos | quoquos | go/come |
The future (ro-) is the most temporal of the TAM markers. It marks events that the speaker believes will occur in the future. The Skerre future has a sense of immmediacy, but without too much of the volitionality of the English future. It is closer to English phrase it's about to happen than the English phrase it will happen.
The irrealis (ki-) is used to refer to unrealized events. It stands in opposition to the previous four TAM markers, which group together as the realis TAM markers. Its uses are somewhat similar to the use of the subjunctive in European languages, though like all languages, Skerre's use of the irrealis/subjunctive is somewhat idiomatic. The irrealis in Skerre marks polite commands, exhortations, and a collection of subordinate clauses.
Transitive verbs (those that have a subject and take an absolutive object) have additional suffixal morphology. If they are appearing with a pronominal object, the object occurs as an affix on the verb. If there is no pronominal object, these verbs still take the transitive suffix (TR), -(i)n (The i does not appear if there is a stem-final vowel).
The -(i)n suffix is sensitive to syntactic transitivity; that is, whether or not there is an ergative and absolutive NP that can appear with that particular verb. Thus, if a normally transitive verb is de-transitivized by the anti-causative, then the suffix does not appear. Likewise, when an intransitive verb is causativized, the suffix appears. (See the Derivational page for examples.)
The object suffixes and the transitive suffix are intertwined morphologically, so I present them together below. The endings are as follows:
| OBJ | singular | plural |
| 1st person | -(i)na | -(i)no |
| 2nd person | -{ii/VV}na | -{ii/VV}ra |
| 3rd person | -{ii/VV}sa | -(ii/VV}te |
| lexical NP/null anaphor | -(i)n | |
In the first person, as in the base transitive suffix itself, the i only appears if the verb is a consonant final stem. For the second and third persons, the vowel in the suffix is ii after a consonant final stem. If the stem ends in a vowel, the stem's final vowel is lengthened in these two persons.
This is exemplified from two paradigms. First, the paradigm for a consonant final-stem, taking the allomorphs with the i.
| ’ok, see | ||||
| OBJ | singular | plural | ||
| 1 | ’okina | ... see me | ’okino | ... see us |
| 2 | ’okiina | ... see you | ’okiira | ... see yous |
| 3 | ’okiisa | ... see him/her | ’okiite | ... see them |
| lex NP | ’okin | ... see ... | ||
Second, a vowel-final stem, with the lengthening of the stem-final vowel in the second and third persons.
| tora, push | ||||
| OBJ | singular | plural | ||
| 1 | torana | ... push me | torano | ... push us |
| 2 | toraana | ... push you | toraara | ... push yous |
| 3 | toraasa | ... push him/her | toraate | ... push them |
| lex NP | toran | ... push ... | ||
The object suffixes (along with the subject markers) don't have the ergative/absolutive alignment found with lexical noun phrases in Skerre; rather, they correspond (in general) to objects in English, German, Latin, Russian, etc. Thus, the object suffixes will be glossed as pers/num.ACC (ACC is short for accusative).
However, in contrast to the subject markers, the object suffixes are clearly affixes, undergoing specific word-internal morphophonological processes (the epenthesis of i), and lacking the mobility of subject clitics. This lack of mobility is shown below:
Eratina-ti. PFV-capture-1SG.ACC=3PL.NOM They captured me.
Koni-ti/(*Konina-ti) eratina. NEG=3PL.NOM/*NEG-1SG.ACC=3PL.NOM) PFV-capture-1SG.ACC They didn't capture me.
Kot-ti/(*Kotina-ti) eratina? how=3PL.NOM/(*how.1SG=3PL.NOM) PFV-capture-1SG.ACC How did they capture me?
The object suffixes do not mark agreement since they are in complementary distribution with full NPs that are objects.
This concludes the discussion of verbal morphology, but as the last section shows, the verbal morphology works in close tandem with several words that appear very near the verb. These will be discussed in the section on verbal satellites.