41 ] 
Verbs. 
15 
(V) VERBS. 
•38. Verbs are Neuter, Active, and Passive. 
They have two Numbers, Singular and Plural. They are generally 
placed at the end of a sentence. They have four Moods, viz. :— 
Infinitive, Indicative, Imperative, and Conditional. 
39. The Infinitive appears always to end in sth (or stha or st or sta), 
as, awesth, to bring; yosth, to eat; lushtisth, to burn or be frost-bitten. 
If stha or sta * is the t terminal, not sth, the a is very short, hardly dis¬ 
cernible, and is always elided if the word following it commences with a 
vowel. In the following it is taken for granted that the Infinitive ends 
in sth. By rejecting the above termination a root is obtained (which 
has often been borrowed from various languages) from which the several 
Tenses are formed. If the root ends in a way which will render the 
affixes hard to pronounce, it undergoes some slight change, as lushtisth 
to burn, root, lusht, which, in some of the cases, becomes luzh. 
40. The Infinitive is very often used as a Verbal Substantive. It is 
then inflected in the Singular-—(it is not used in the Plural)—by a 
long a, (which answers to dugd, tka, for the sake of), being added, as 
yosthd, for the sake of eating, nizhisthd bon giats, fetch us a seat 
for the sake of sitting on; and by adding e or l and using one of the 
many post-positions given in para. 63, as lunishtl m&sh, by the fall¬ 
ing. It can be used in the following way : ikie visth ass, it is (appropriate) 
to punish him. 
41. The Participle Present, or Active Participle, or Derivative Sub¬ 
stantive, or Noun of Agency, e.g., “ doing,” is formed from the root by 
adding n or l, as, (good work) doing (man), (le kudum ) kul ( manchl ), 
nishin , sitting. It may also be used in the Future or Past Tense, as, 
“ the man who sang, or is singing, or is about to sing ” are represented 
by “ song-making,” lain kul. It takes the place of a Relative Pronoun, 
as, “ the man wffio took the news has come,” shu awel manchl dyo. It 
can be used as an Adjective, as, song-making (man), lain kul, or a 
song maker, singer; ushp wetsu amchol, horse’s shoe fastening (farrier). 
When used as an Adjective, it changes gender, to agree with the Sub¬ 
stantive which it qualifies, as, piltil-l ushp, a falling horse. 
* In Sir G. Robertson’s manuscript collection the Infinitives end in sta , but he is 
“doubtful whether they are really Infinitives or a form of ‘from eating,’ ‘.from 
going/ etc.” 
