In English, when we want to talk about who did something, we conjugate the verb by changing the endings, and sometimes even the verb itself! For example, we can say:

• John is an elder.
• I am an elder.
• You are an elder.

Notice that the verb changes to agree with who is doing the action. This is called the subject. In English, whether the subject chooses to do something, or it just happens, the verb is conjugated the same.

• The door opens.
• John opens the door.
• I open the door.

In Alabama, the verb will change depending on whether the subject is an agent (someone is doing an action on purpose, or with intention), or a patient (an action happens to something). Agent conjugation can usually be translated directly to English, but patient conjugation might look a little different. In this lesson, we'll talk about both.

Agent Conjugation

Agent markers make distinctions between 'number' and 'person'.

• Singular (sg.) means that the subject is just one person or thing.
• Plural (pl.) means that the subject is more than one person or thing.
• While it's rare, some verbs in Alabama can have Dual (du.) subjects. This means the subject is exactly two people or things.

Person refers to who is doing the action specifically. Is it the person speaking? The person listening? Someone else?

• First person (1) refers to the person speaking. In English, this is the word "I" or "Me" in the First person Singular and "Us" or "We" in the First person Plural
• Second person (2) refers to the person listening. In English, this is word "You" in the Second Person Singular and "Y'all" in the Second Person Plural
• Third person (3) refers to someone else! In English, third person pronouns are "He", "She", "They", etc.

Alabama Agent Conjugation is really complicated! The basic way to conjugate a verb is to add a suffix to a verb. The suffixes you can add are:

For 1st person sg. and 3rd person, conjugating is easy!

• For 3rd person sg., just say the verb as it is written in the dictionary form.
• For 3rd person pl., attach the prefix ho-, or o- Sometimes, in fast speech, you might hear the /h/ drop, and become a sound like /oi/. This is optional!
• For 1st person sg., attach the suffix -li. Easy!
• Remember that verbs must end in a special TAM suffix if they are not a question. For the examples on this page, we'll use -hchi, but any suffix is fine.

For example,

For the other person-number pairs, it gets a little messy. To know how the verb changes, you'll need to know what kind of verb it is. In Alabama, the suffix changes depending on:

1. If the verb ends in -li (ex.: bitli 'to dance')
2. If the verb ends in -ka, -ko, or -ki (ex.: loska 'to lie')
3. If the verb ends in -chi (ex.: holbachi 'to paint a picture')
4. If the verb doesn't end in any of these, then we need to see what the syllable structure of the verb is!

Verbs Ending in -li

These are the easiest verbs to conjugate! Just like how in English, when we make a word that ends in -y plural we 'drop the y and add -ies, in Alabama when you want to make a verb conjugate that ends in -li, we have to drop the -li and add the suffixes. For the 1st.pl, there is a special suffix, -hili so that we can avoid looking too similar to the 1st sg.

Verbs ending in -chi

Verbs ending in -chi are also easy to conjugate! For the 2nd person, and 1st person plural, first delete the final -chi and add -chiska (2nd.sg), -chilka (1st.pl), or -chaska (2nd.pl)

	sg.	pl.
1	holbachili	holbachilka
2	holbachiska	holbachaska
3	holbachi	hoholbachi

Verbs ending in -ka, -ko, or -ki

Verbs ending in -k- followed by some vowel that have an agent, all conjugate the same way: They behave like the -ka is it's own verb! You can conjugate ka as if it were an iCV verb (see below), conjugate it regularly, and attach it to the verb "root". For Verb roots with a vowel before the -ka, you might here a -y- inserted between the root and the conjugated ka. This is a process called vowel hiatus: In Alabama, it's not good to have a long vowel directly before a short vowel, so we insert a -y- to break it up.

	sg.	pl.
1	loskali	losilka
2	losiska	losaska
3	loska	holoska

You might notice that for the 2nd person and 1st person plural, verbs like isko 'to drink' lose their final o, and instead get a final a: this is because in Alabama, words ending in ka are so frequent that all words ending in -k followed by any vowel are treated the same!

	sg.	pl.
1	iskoli	isilka
2	isiska	isaska
3	isko	ohisko

-nka

All verbs ending in -nka further alter the stem before appending the conjugated auxiliary ka: In these verbs, the final nasal consonant n disappears, and the next vowel is instead nasalized.

	sg.	pl.
1	mankali	maiⁿlka
2	maiⁿska	maaⁿska
3	manka	homanka

Simple Verbs

Simple verbs are what we call all the other verbs. For them, we need to look at their syllable structure to determine where the agent suffix moves. In Alabama, the agent suffix wants to stay as close to the right as possible without creating a sequence of two Consonant-Vowel syllables. For example, the hypothetical word choopachi is bad because pachi has two consonant-vowel (Light) syllables in a row. You should memorize the placement rules based on the following syllable structures:

• iCV
• CVVCV
• CVCCV
• CVCV
• CVVCCV

No other types of simple verbs exist! So that's all you'll have to memorize.

iCV Verbs

For iCV Verbs, the agent suffix reverses, and becomes a prefix. Also, in the 2st person and 1st person plural, the initial i- is dropped.

	sg.	pl.
1	ipali	ilpa
2	ispa	haspa
3	ipa	ohipa

CVVCV Verbs

For this small class of verbs, You move the suffix inward, to the left of the last syllable. Note that verbs that have their vowel lengthened but are underlyingly CVCV will not conjugate like this. You can tell if that has happened by looking at the dictionary. If a verb is CVVCV, but in the definition it looks something like [/CVCV], then it's probably a CVCV verb.

	sg.	pl.
1	choopali	choolpa
2	choospa	choohaspa
3	choopa	hochoopa

CVCCV Verbs

For these words, the suffix moves inward, but tries to avoid creating a sequence of three consonants; that's not allowed in Alabama.

	sg.	pl.
1	hofnali	holifna
2	hochifna	hohachifna
3	hofna	hohofna

CVVCCV

These words conjugate exactly like CVCCV Verbs. The long vowel should be pronounced just a little bit shorter than usual when its before a consonant cluster.

	sg.	pl.
1	oompali	oolimpa
2	oochimpa	oohachimpa
3	oompa	ohoompa

CVCV

These words are unique: For the 2nd person and 1st person plural, you must delete the last vowel, and then keep the suffixes like usual. For the 1st person plural, you use the special form -hili just like with verbs ending in -li

	sg.	pl.
1	hochifali	hochifhili
2	hochifchi	hochifhachi
3	hochifa	hohochifa

Irregular Verbs

Alabama only has four true irregular verbs, unlike languages like French and Spanish were there are a ton of irregular verbs! You should memorize these verbs individually, but for three of them, there is an easy pattern to use. The four irregular verbs are nochi 'to sleep', hicha 'to see', haalo 'to hear', and aɬɬa 'to go'. For three of these, nochi, hicha, and haalo, they take the prefix form of the agent markers: that is, they conjugate as if they were an iCV verb. For example,

	sg.	pl.
1	nochili	innochi
2	isnochi	hasnochi
3	nochi	honochi

aɬɬa is the only verb to take a totally irregular conjugation pattern. You should memorize it:

	sg.	pl.
1	aɬɬali	aaⁿɬiya
2	aɬchiya	aɬhachiya
3	aɬɬa	ohaɬɬa

That's all there is to agent conjugation!

Now you try!