4B.9 Which one when — the cheat sheet
4B · Verbs in use — which form when · a plain-language guide to Assyrian (Sureth) grammar
If you take one page from this chapter, take this one.
| you want to… | use | not |
|---|---|---|
| say what's happening now | progressive — beptakhele | the bare present |
| …unless it's want / know / can | bare present — bayyen "I want" | the progressive |
| say what you generally do | ki-patekh | |
| say something just happened | plain past — ana adi-shmili "I've just heard" | the perfect |
| say you're leaving right now | plain past — ana kheshli | the future |
| say what you intend to do | bet- in the 1st person — ana pt-azen | |
| suggest something | bet- in "we" — bet-rappakh "let's throw" | |
| ask what you ought to do | bare present — mu oden? | |
| soften an order, or bless someone | bet- in "you" — t-avet basima | an imperative |
| say a result stands now | perfect — lela bshelta "it isn't cooked" | the plain past |
| report what you did not witness | perfect — khilule "he ate it (apparently)" | the plain past |
| say "not yet" | perfect — hala lele tiyya | the plain past |
| tell a story | progressive, all the way through | the past |
| say it was done to something | payesh + participle | |
| say "without ___ing" | la + verbal noun | the infinitive |
| say "for ___ing" | ka- + infinitive | the verbal noun |
And the reassurance, same as Chapter 4's: none of this is required to be understood. A plain past and a progressive will carry a conversation, and every choice above has a speaker somewhere who made the other one. What this chapter buys you is hearing correctly — knowing that a story told in the present tense is normal, that dilukh? is a question and not a report, and that a perfect can quietly mean "so I'm told."
---
Skipped from Khan (logged for completeness)
- §10.5–10.9, the copula and existential forms in use — Khan's discourse account of the enclitic vs. independent copula, the two deictic copulas, and the negative copula. Reason: the forms and their everyday jobs are Chapter 3, and *"There is" and "to have" covers the existential. What is skipped is the discourse-prominence analysis.*
- §10.12–10.13, the compound forms with ave — some thirty combinations (ave ptikha, aviva ptikha, vile beptakha, vayele ptikha …), each with its discourse motivation. Reason: *The participles teaches the two that carry weight, the irrealis perfect and the doubled progressive; the rest are recognition material for a reader of texts.*
- §10.14 kam-patekhle — the northern past-with-object prefix. Introduced in The tense particles and Objects on the verb, in full; Khan's point that it is functionally identical to ptekhle is noted in the ptekhle section above. Reason: it is a regional alternative, not a separate meaning.
- §10.2.9, the "long" S-suffixes; class A vs class B verbs. Khan splits the verbs into two classes by how conservatively they take the preverbal particles, and describes every function twice. Reason: the split is about which speakers keep *ki- where, not about what the forms mean. Where it changes the advice — the mind verbs of Bare patekh — it is folded in.*
- §10.18–10.19, direct and indirect object marking — when an object gets a ka- phrase, when it gets a pronominal copy on the verb, when it gets nothing. Reason: *Objects on the verb, in full covers the forms and the "the thing on the verb, the person in a ka- phrase" rule; the rest is a fine-grained account of definiteness and word order that belongs with Chapter 9's syntax.*
Khan's volume 2, now covered. This chapter is one of six. Khan's Chapter 12 (the clause) is the last sections of Chapter 9, plus its note on khu and magar; his Chapter 11 (what each preposition means) is the "five big prepositions" section of Chapter 8; and his Chapters 13 and 14 (how clauses follow and contain each other), with §9.1 (when to say kha "a"), are Chapter 9B, "Linking sentences". What remains outstanding is the rest of his Chapter 9: demonstratives, reflexives and quantifiers in discourse.