This section is about a heterogenous class of grammatical elements, which I will call verbal satellites. As their name suggests, they "revolve" around verbs; they also interact with each other to a fair degree. I will divide my discussion into the following:
The negation particle, koni, negates sentences. It is equivalent in meaning to the English not or n't. It appears (sometimes with enclitics attached it) right before the verb, as in the following examples:
Koni eyara a Tsotar. NEG PFV-cry ABS (name) Tsotar didn't cry.
Koni-ha eyara NEG=1SG.NOM PFV-cry I didn't cry.
Koni just conveys simple negation. Other concepts such as never and no longer are handled with the presence of koni at the beginning of the verbal complex and an adverb after it.
Imperatives have their own negation particle, rone. Distributionally, it behaves just like koni, as in the following:
Rone yara, keriyosir! NEG.IMP cry.IMP boy Don't cry, boy!
The particle wa is used for asking polar questions (questions that have an answer of either yes or no). This is illustrated below:
Eyara-wa a Tsotar. PRV-cry=Q ABS (name) Did Tsotar cry?
Wa always appears immediately after the first constituent in the sentence (not just the clause). When there are multiple second position clitics (as occurs when there are also subject markers), either order is possible, though there is a preference for the question marker to come at the end of the clitic cluster, as in the following:
Eheeresiisa-na-wa? PFV-rescue-3SG.ACC=2SG:NOM=Q Did you rescue him?
The domain of wa is the entire sentence, as one can see in the following:
Tsotar-wa an eheeresiina. (name)=Q FOC PFV-rescue-2SG.ACC Was it Tsotar that you rescued?
This domain is much larger than the subject markers, as the following will show.
The most common kind of verbal satellites are the subject pronominal clitics (henceforth subject markers). They have the following forms:
| singular | plural | |
| 1 | ha | wo |
| 2 | na | ra |
| 3 | (null) | ti |
The subject markers are not equivalent to either the ergative or the absolutive case discussed for noun phrases; rather, the subject markers pronominalize subjects, just like the English pronoun set that includes I and he. For this reason the subject markers are glossed as person/number.NOM (NOM short for nominative), e.g. ha, 1SG.NOM. In later sections, the null third person singular will not be glossed.
The third person plural subject markers are used even when plural lexical NPs are present, making the subject markers agreement affixes, in contrast to the object suffixes. If it needs to be made clear that a third singular participant is doing the action, the independent pronoun ten can be used, but this is quite rare.
The subject markers usually appear second in the clause, but they can appear third if the verb is also followed by wa. In most clauses, they appear immediately after the verb itself, as in the following:
Quoquos-ha. PROG-go=1SG.NOM I'm going.
Eratiite-wo. PFV-capture-3PL.ACC=1PL.NOM We captured them.
However, they appear before the verb when there is a negation particle, as shown below:
Koni-ha eyara. NEG=1SG.NOM PFV-cry I didn't cry.
The subject markers also appear before the verb when there is a fronted word. This is most common in questions, like the example below:
Kot-na quos? how=2SG.NOM go:BASE How's it going? (lit. How are you going?)
Note, though, that the subject markers are sensitive to the boundary of the clause in way that the question particle isn't. The subject markers cannot attach to complementizers or focused phrases (stars indicate incorrect placement of the clitic), as shown in the following:
...saa(*-na) e’okin-na a Tsotar. that(*=2SG.NOM) PFV-see-TR=2SG.NOM ABS (name) Comp(*=Cl) V=CL ...that you saw Tsotar
Kiikinta(*-ti) an(*-ti) eratin-ti. PL~bird(*=3PL.NOM) FOC(*=3PL.NOM) PFV-capture-TR=3PL.NOM Foc NP(*=Cl) Comp(*=CL) V=CL It was birds that they captured.
Note that wa could go after kiikinta in this last example.
| Class | Placement |
| Negation | Verbal Complex-initial |
| Question particle | Second in the sentence |
| Subject Marker | Second in the clause
They follow:
|
Although both single words and phrases (usually NPs with oblique syntactic markers) can function as modifiers of verbs and adverbials can appear both before and after the verb, this section will look at the syntax of the invariant adverbial words that appear preverbally. The syntax of the other adverbials will be treated in the next section.
The class of preverbal adverbs is small, and all are aspectual (though some aspectual adverbs follow the verb). All these adverbs must immediately precede the verb—they cannot follow it. The chart below lists the preverbal adverbs.
| Skerre | Gloss | tsinee | just | hari | again | naris | repeatedly | terik | already |
Here are a few examples of some preverbal adverbs. This first example shows that the subject markers follow the preverbal adverbials, if they are the first element of the clause.
Hari-ha e’okin a Tsotar. again=1SG.NOM PFV-see-TR ABS (name) I saw Tsotar again.
So queyon ser-na naris kakerat? INS reason which=2SG.NOM repeatedly PROG-AC-capture Why do you repeatedly get captured?
This second example illustrates that the subject markers will "climb" to the front-most word the clitic can appear on.
Summarizing the three verbal section, the following gives an example of a verbal complex with all the types of morphology and particles.
Koni-na-wa tsinee eriinotorana ta ten. Koni =na =wa tsinee e- rii- no- tora- na ta ten. NEG =2SG.NOM =Q just PFV- CAUS- down- push- 1SG.ACC LOC 3SG Didn't you just make me push him down?