4.25 What the patterns actually mean
4 · Verbs — how the system works · a plain-language guide to Assyrian (Sureth) grammar
The three patterns gave you the shapes. This is what choosing one of them does to the meaning — Khan's §4.25, the longest section in his chapter.
Pattern I: mostly things that happen to you
A large share of Pattern I verbs are what linguists call unaccusative — the subject is not doing anything, it is undergoing something. English usually needs "get" or "become":
| Assyrian | English |
|---|---|
| barez | it dries |
| bashel | it cooks |
| kapen | he gets hungry |
| kareb | he gets angry |
| yaked | it burns |
| napel | he falls |
| damekh | he lies down, he sleeps |
Plenty of Pattern I verbs are ordinary transitive actions too — patekh "he opens (something)," shakel "he takes," akhel "he eats." The point is only that if a Pattern I verb looks intransitive, that is the pattern's home territory, not an exception.
Pattern III: the m- that means "make it happen"
This is the most useful thing in What the patterns actually mean, because it is productive: put an m- on a Pattern I verb and you have the verb for causing it. Every pair below is Khan's, both halves printed in his dictionary:
| Pattern I | Pattern III | |
|---|---|---|
| barez it dries | mabrez he dries it | |
| damekh he sleeps | madmekh he puts (a child) to bed | |
| yalep he learns | malep he teaches | (= makes learn) |
| kareb he is angry | makreb he angers | |
| akhel he eats | makhel he feeds | |
| khaze he sees | makhze he shows | |
| bakhe he weeps | mabkhe he makes (someone) weep | |
| palekh he works | maplekh he puts (a thing) to work, uses | |
| mate he arrives | mamte he brings (it) up |
Once you have seen five of these, an unfamiliar m- verb stops being unfamiliar: malpana "teacher" is transparently "the one who makes you learn."
Pattern II: the doer is doing it to something
Pattern II marks an active agent working on an object. The neatest evidence is a root that exists in both patterns with the transitivity flipped:
| Assyrian | pattern | English |
|---|---|---|
| zarez | I | he gets himself ready |
| zarez | II | he prepares / arranges something |
| bashel | I | it cooks |
| bashel | II | he cooks it |
| kalep | I | it peels (tree loses bark) |
| kalep | II | he peels it |
Same letters, two patterns, and the difference is whether anybody is doing it.
Quadriliteral verbs: four consonants, and a lot of borrowing
The four-consonant verbs are the pattern the language reaches for when it takes a word in from Azeri, Persian or Arabic. Very often the verb is built straight off a noun or adjective already in use:
| noun / adjective | verb | English |
|---|---|---|
| tammez clean | tammez (qi) | to clean |
| juvvab answer | javveb (qi) | to answer |
There is also a causative quadriliteral with the same m- as Pattern III on the front, so the "make it happen" logic reaches these verbs too.
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