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2.2.1.3 Voice and aspect
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The category voice includes active and passive in Saterland Frisian. Passive is construed periphrastically (not morphologically), with an auxiliary and the lexical verb as a past participle. For example:

1
Die Buur kopet ju Ku. ‘The farmer buys the cow.’
Ju Ku wädt fon dän Buur koped. ‘The cow is bought by the farmer.’
Die Buur häd ju Ku koped. ‘The farmer has bought the cow.’
Ju Ku is fon dän Buur koped wuden. ‘The cow has been bought by the farmer.’

Middles cannot be expressed in a Dutch or English style (e.g. this book reads well). Instead, one has to resort to constuctions like: düt Bouk lät sik goud leze. Compare: Boukenholt lät sik goud kleeuwe ‘beech wood is easy to split’ or: Sound wädt nit so meenumen as Klai ‘sand does not stick like clay’.

Like the category of voice, aspect is expressed analytically, not morphologically. The perfect tense is used to convey that an event is finished (e.g. die Buur häd ju Ku koped ‘the farmer has bought the cow’). The active perfect tense is formed with an auxiliary verb (häbe with immutative predicates, weze with mutative predicates).

Perfect aspect may also be inherent in certain verbal particles, for instance in: Antje it dän Appel ap ‘Antje eats an apple’, where the complex separable verb apiete is used.

Durative aspect is expressed by constructions like: Jan sit tou lezen or Jan is an t lezen ‘John is reading’. Inchoative aspect can also be expressed with an t-constructions: do bee grote Fäildstene kume an t glieden ‘both large boulders begin to slide’. Other aspectual auxiliary verbs are blieuwe and gunge, used in certain contexts, e.g. säike gunge ‘to go and seek’, sitte gunge ‘to sit down’ or sitten blieuwe ‘to stay put (e.g. the wind)’.

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