The four basic vowels of Nawat are a, e, i and u. The /u/ phoneme has allophones (variant pronunciations) intermediate between cardinal [o] and [u]. There is a further vowel o with marginal phonemic status: it is found in a few native words in particular dialects (e.g. noya ‘grandmother’, kojtan ~ kujtan ‘forest’) and in Spanish loans.

Historically each vowel may be either short or long. Loss of length distinctions is apparently recent and may not yet be complete, but has progressed so far that it would probably be counterproductive to recommend that standard Nawat spelling indicate length, in view of the additional learning burden this would impose. The lack of indications in spelling, on the other hand, in no way impedes native speakers from spontaneously observing the distinctions they have in their own pronunciation.

The following diphthongs occur in Nawat pronunciation: ay, ey, (oy), aw, ew, iw. Phonemically these are best analysed as vowel-semivowel sequences. In pronunciation there are also rising diphthongs such as [yu] (in tiupan ‘church’), which in this case we suggest analysing as underlying vowel-vowel sequences.

Normally when two vowels occur in sequence in the spelling they represent distinct syllables, not a diphthong. In such cases there is a strong tendency to avoid an intervocalic hiatus in pronunciation, often resolved by the insertion of a semivowel (y or w) between the vowels, e.g. nikpi[y]a ‘I have’, ku[w]at ‘snake’. Since these intervocalic semivowels are synchronically non-distinctive, we recommend their omission from standard spelling except where they must be considered phonemic for morphological reasons (e.g. nu-wan ‘with me’, ni-yaw ‘I go’).

Nawat has the consonants p, t, k, kw, m, n, tz, ch, s, sh, l, y, w and j.

The sound of j varies between an English h and an American Spanish j; it may be palatalized following a front vowel (as in ijtik ‘inside’) and is sometimes inaudible word-finally. This Nawat phoneme nearly always occurs following a vowel: tajku ‘half’, naja ‘I, me’, and plays a special part in reduplications: ijiswat ‘leaves’, tajtamal ‘tortillas’ (from iswat and tamal).

Tz and ch are affricates corresponding to s and sh respectively. There are phonological and morphological reasons for considering tz, ch and kw single phonemes.

There is considerable documentation of a tendency to devoice or ‘whisper’ l, w and y in word-final position and when followed by a voiceless consonant. Among present-day speakers we have not been able to appreciate such a pattern which is evidently non-phonemic, although in certain particular cases it has evidently become phonologised and results in allomorphic alternation such as pej-ki ‘began’ for underlying *pew-ki (cf. pew-a ‘begins’), minash-ki ‘hid’ for *minay-ki (cf. minay-a ‘hides’), where voiceless [W] and [Y] have been rephonemicised as j and sh respectively.

There is also a tendency to pronounce k as a voiced stop or fricative (like Spanish g) except in word-final position and in contact with a voiceless consonant, where it is invariably voiceless. The tendency described is applied most fully in the Witzapan (Santo Domingo de Guzmán) dialect; in other Nawat dialects the voicing of k is more restricted.

N is alveolar at the beginning of syllables. At the end of syllables, the nasal consonant represented by n is either assimilated in position to a following consonant, or else is velar. Since this rule is general, we recommend spelling the combination [mp] np rather than *mp, e.g. senpa [sempa] ‘again, always’. Thus intervocalic n is usually alveolar, e.g. ina [i-na] ‘says’. But in some morphologically complex forms an intervocalic nasal is apparently treated as syllable-final rather than syllable-initial and is therefore velar. We recommend spelling such words with nh: kenha [keN(-)a] ‘like, as’, nemanha [nemaN(‑)a] ‘afterwards’, kinhita [k/giN(-)ita] ‘sees them’.

P, m and kw are the only Nawat phonemes that may not occur word-finally. M and kw do not occur in syllable-final position either: m is neutralised to n (see above), and kw becomes k pre-consonantally, e.g. tan-tuk for underlying *tam-tuk ‘finished’ (cf. tam-i ‘finishes’, tzaktuk for underlying *tzakw-tuk ‘closed’ (cf. ki-tzakw-a ‘closes it’).

Other consonants, such as r, b, d, g and f occur in Spanish loans; [b] and [d] occur rarely in native words, possibly as allophones of p and t. Concerning [g] for k in Nawat, see above.

Syllables in native Nawat words are restricted to the shapes (C)V(C), that is, a single vowel optionally preceded by one consonant and optionally followed by one consonant. In other words the only possible syllable shapes are V, CV, VC and CVC. Possible word shapes follow from this: two-syllable words, for example, might be VV (no examples), VCV (e.g. ina ‘says’), VVC (e.g. iat ‘tobacco’), VCVC (e.g. apan ‘river’), CVV (e.g. kia ‘yes, that’s right’), CVCV (e.g. miki ‘dies’), CVVC (e.g. kuat ‘snake’), CVCVC (e.g. tamal ‘tortilla’), VCCV (e.g. achtu ‘first’), VCCVC (e.g. iswat ‘leaf’), CVCCV (e.g. keski ‘how many’), and CVCCVC (e.g. kojtan ‘forest’). Thus there are no consonant clusters at the beginning or end of a word, and medial clusters are limited to two consonants.

With rather few exceptions, Nawat words are stressed on the penultimate syllable. Diminutives in ‑tzin or ‑chin, which are sometimes stressed on the last syllable, constitute a notable exception. We do not recommend the writing of accents to specify stress placement, since the few exceptions to the rule given vary somewhat between dialects. Native speakers will know where to stress each word; students of the language must be taught, but can rely mostly on the penultimate stress rule. However, we do use the acute accent (´) sometimes to differentiate otherwise homographic words such as ka (conjunction or preposition) from ká ‘who’, and ne (definite article) from né ‘there’.

Nouns

Some nouns have two forms, called absolute and construct. Construct forms are used with possessive prefixes, and absolute forms in the absence of a possessive prefix: siwa-t ‘woman’ (ne siwat ‘the woman’, se siwat ‘a woman’), but nu-siwa-w ‘my wife’, i-siwa-w ‘his wife’. In this example siwa- is a noun stem meaning ‘woman, wife’, -t is the absolute suffix and -w is the construct suffix. Nu- and i- are possessive prefixes.

Some nouns take the same form in the absolute and the construct: ne tamal ‘the tortilla’, ne nu-tamal ‘my tortilla’; se mistun ‘a cat’, se nu-mistun ‘a my cat’ (i.e. ‘one cat of mine’). Some nouns only have a construct form and cannot normally be used in the abolute (at least in good idiomatic Nawat): this includes names of parts of the body and names of kinship relations, e.g. (nu)-tan ‘(my) mouth’, (nu)-nan ‘(my) mother’.

Absolutive suffixes are -t (after a vowel: siwa-t ‘woman, wife’, tutu-t ‘bird’) and -ti (after a consonant: kwach-ti ‘cloth’). Construct suffixes are -w (after a vowel: -siwa-w) or ‘zero’ (after a consonant or -u: -kwach, -tutu). An alternative construct suffix is -yu as in ‑naka-yu ‘meat, flesh’, es-yu ‘blood’. This is sometimes called a marker of inalienable possession and may contrast with a -w/zero construct: -nakayu ‘flesh/meat (of)’ contrasts with -nakaw ‘meat (of, to be eaten by)’; both correspond to the absolutive noun naka-t ‘flesh, meat’.

Most nouns have plurals formed from the singular by reduplication. This consists of a repetition of the initial vowel or consonant-vowel sequence with the insertion of a j between the repeated segments, e.g. from iswat ‘leaf’, i-j-iswat ‘leaves’; from tamal ‘tortilla’, ta-j-tamal ‘tortillas’. A few nouns, mostly designating humans, have a different kind of plural formed by adding a suffix (-met or -(t)ket) to the noun’s stem: taka-t ‘man (absolute)’, taka-met ‘men’; siwa-t ‘woman’, siwa-tket ‘women’. Sometimes these are redundantly reduplicated, e.g. tajtakamet, sijsiwatket. These suffixes mark absolute plural.

There is also a construct plural suffix -(a)wan but it is restricted to kinship terms: nu-ika-w ‘my brother’, nu-ika-wan ‘my brothers’, nu-kunpa ‘my friend’, nu-kunpa-wan ‘my friends’. Other construct plurals are formed by reduplication either of the construct noun (nu-taj-tamal ‘my tortillas’, nu-kwaj-kwach ‘my clothes’) or of the possessive prefix (nu-ish ‘my eye’, nuj-nu-ish ‘my eyes’).

Determiners, adjectives and pronouns

The definite article ne is invariable for number (like ‘the’ in English) and compatible with both absolute and construct nouns: ne tamal ‘the tortilla’, ne nutamal ‘my tortilla’, ne tajtamal ‘the tortillas’, ne nutajtamal ‘my tortillas’. The numeral ‘one’, se, serves as indefinite article, and is likewise compatible with both absolutes and constructs: se tamal ‘a tortilla’, se nutamal ‘a tortilla of mine’. Sejse, the plural of se, may be used to mean ‘some, a few’: sejse tamal ‘some tortillas’, but is better thought of as a quantifier.

The basic demonstratives, ini ‘this’ and uni ‘that’, are used as both determiners and pronouns, and are generally invariable for number too: ini tamal ‘this tortilla’, uni tamal ‘that tortilla’, ini tajtamal ‘these tortillas’ etc.; Ini se tamal ‘This is a tortilla’, Ini tajtamal ‘These are tortillas’. (Notice the lack of a verb ‘to be’.)

Attributive adjectives generally precede the noun they qualify, but may also follow: se ajwiak tamal (o se tamal ajwiak) ‘a tasty tortilla’. The adjective in a plural noun phrase takes a plural form, obtained reduplication just as in nouns: ajajwiak tamal ‘tasty tortillas’. This seems to be the standard construction, in which the adjective is reduplicated and the following noun is not. If, however, the order were reversed, we would probably find tajtamal ajwiak. The generalisation is that the first pluralisable element (adjective or noun) is pluralised; it is sufficient for one element of the phrase to be marked for number (as in English, generally), thus the qualified noun need not be reduplicated. However, we do find exceptions to this rule.

Predicative adjectives also pluralise; they are used without a verb: Ini tamal ajwiak ‘This tortilla is tasty’, Ini tajtamal ajajwiak ‘These tortillas are tasty’.

There are six personal pronouns, three singular and three plural:

naja ‘I’, taja ‘you’, yaja ‘he, she’

tejemet ‘we’, anmejemet ‘you (pl.)’, yejemet ‘they’.

(There are no gender distinctions in Nawat.) Personal pronouns are mainly used for emphasis or for other discourse reasons, since person and number of subjects, objects, possessors and complements are indexed by prefixes or suffixes in verbs and other predicates, construct nouns and prepositions: Naja nikwa tamal or just Nikwa tamal ‘I eat tortillas’; Tinechishmati ‘You know me’ (better than Taja tinechishmati naja); isiwaw ‘his wife’ (rather than isiwaw yaja); tuwan ‘with us’ (instead of tuwan tejemet).

Quantifiers

Quantifiers, like determiners and adjectives, precede the noun they modify: sé kunet ‘one child’, sejse kunet ‘some children’, chupi kunet ‘few children, a few children’, miak kunet ‘plenty of children, many children’, etc. Note that the noun needn’t be pluralised when modified by a plural quantifier. Muchi ‘all’ also precedes the noun and is commonly followed by the definite article: muchi ne kujkunet ‘all the children’, muchi ne at ‘all the water’. All these quantifiers may be used pronominally: Muchi kinekit wan maya chupi kipiat ‘All want (it) but only a few have (it).’ The same is true of the numerals: ume kunet ‘two children’, majtakti dolar ‘ten dollars’. Nikpia ume ‘I have two.’

The higher numbers are in disuse in present-day Nawat, but a reconstruction of the full system is possible and supported by our knowledge of Classical Nahuatl. It is a vigesimal system, with the numbers below twenty organised in increments of five, thus reducing finally to the four basic numerals sé ‘one’, ume ‘two’, yey ‘three’, nawi ‘four’. An older form of sé – sen – is found in componds such as sen-pa ‘again’ (originally ‘one time’), sen-talia ‘put together’, etc., while ume, yey, nawi have the prefix forms un-, yesh-, naw-.

The ‘fives’ below twenty have specific names: makwil ‘five’, majtakti ‘ten’, kashtul ‘fifteen’. Majtakti and kashtul combine with the numerals from one to four, e.g. majtakti sé ‘eleven’ (ten-one), kashtul yey ‘eighteen’ (fifteen-three). Makwil does not, but rather a distinct form, chikw-, combines with one to four to provide the numbers six to nine: chikwasen ‘six’, chikume ‘seven’, chikwey ‘eight’, chiknawi ‘nine’.

The twenties are formed with the word pual, a noun formed from the verb pua ‘to count’, similar to ‘score’ in English. Thus: senpual (se pual) ‘twenty’ (one-score), unpual (ume pual) ‘forty’ (two-score), yeshpual (yey pual) ‘sixty’ (three-score), nawpual (nawi pual) ‘eighty’ (four-score). These terms are combined with the numbers below twenty, e.g. yeshpual kashtul ume ‘seventy-seven’ (three-score fifteen two). This system can be extended up to 380 – kashtul nawi pual (nineteen score) – followed introducing a term for the second power of twenty, 400; this term is tzunti. However, tzunti has also been proposed as a modern term for ‘hundred’, which may be convenient for introduction in schools since the old vigesimal counting system is unknown to modern Pipils and modern notation is decimal. ‘One hundred’ is thus sentzunti (or se tzunti).

Genitive and prepositional constructions

Personal possessors are expressed by possessive prefixes attached to a construct noun (see above): nu-siwaw ‘my wife’, mu-siwaw ‘your wife’, i-siwaw ‘his wife’. There is a possessive prefix corresponding to each pesonal pronoun:

PRONOUNS	POSSESSIVE PREFIXES
naja ‘I’	nu- ‘my’
taja ‘you’	mu- ‘your’
yaja ‘he/she’	i- ‘his/her’
tejemet ‘we’	tu- ‘our’
anmejemet ‘you (pl.)’	anmu- ‘your (pl.)’
yejemet ‘they’	in-‘their’

There are two basic constructions for the expression of genitive relations in which the possessor is represented by a noun. In the analytic or prepositional genitive, the relation is expressed by the preposition i-pal ‘of, for’ with the possessed item preceding: ne tamal ipal Juan ‘John’s tortilla’. In the synthetic or construct genitive, there is no preposition and the possessor follows the possessed directly, but the possessed noun is in the construct and takes the third-person possessive prefix: ne i-siwaw Juan ‘Juan’s wife’.

Most Nawat prepositions are of a compound type, based on a word with some noun-like features and deriving historically from a locative noun, called a relational noun. The relational noun stands in a construct relationship to the preposition’s complement, which plays the syntactic function of underlying possessor of the relational-noun-cum-preposition: i-jpak ne mesaj ‘on the table’, i-tech ne apan ‘by the river’, i-wan ne siwat ‘with the woman’, i-pal ne techan ‘of/for the village’. These prepositions thus take the possessive prefix i- although sometimes this is omitted, especially when the relational noun itself begins with an i: ishpan ne tiupan ‘in front of the church’, ipan ne kal ‘behind the house’, wan ne siwat ‘with the woman’, pal ne techan ‘of/for the village’.

When these prepositional are not followed by a noun, the third-person i- prefix results in the implication of a third-person complement i-tech ‘by/next to him/her/it’, i-wan ‘with him/her/it’, i-ishpan ‘in front of him/her/it’, etc. Other pronominal complements are expressed by substituting the appropriate possessive prefix: nu-jpak ‘on me’, mu-wan ‘with you’, tu-pal ‘of/for us’, intech ‘by/next to them’.

A few prepositions have common short forms that lack a possessive prefix and can only be used with nominal complements. We have already seen wan and pal used in this way. Ijtik ‘inside, in’ has the short form tik, and ijpak ‘on’ has the short form pak: ijtik ne techan or tik ne techan ‘in the village’, ijpak ne mesaj or pak ne mesaj ‘on the table’.

The preposition with the full form ika, now little used, and the commoner short form ka, is invariable and does not take personal complements; it also cannot take noun phrase complements introduced by the definite article ne. The preposition (i)ka sometimes has a locative meaning of ‘at’ or ‘to’: ka tiupan ‘at church’ or ‘to (the) church’, ka apan ‘at/to the river’, ka Witzapan ‘to Witzapan’, ka nikan ‘here’, ka né ‘there’. It also has a range of other meanings, including ‘for’ in the senses ‘in exchange for’ or ‘on account of’. In time expressions ka means ‘at (a time)’: ka tayua ‘at night’, ka peyna ‘early’, ka makwil ora ‘at five o’clock’. Finally, ka may precede some prepositional phrases, particularly when the complement is pronominal, e.g. ka nuchan ‘to/at my house, chez moi’, ka nuishpan ‘in front of me’, ka nuitan ‘beneath me’, and when there is no specified complement (i.e. they are used adverbially), e.g. ka ishpan ‘in front’, ka ijtik ‘inside’, ka itan ‘below’. In certain of these uses, ka may optionally be omitted: Naja niyaw (ka) Witzapan ‘I’m going to Witzapan’, Nemi (ka) nikan ‘He/She is here’, Muketza (ka) makwil ora ‘He/She gets up at five o’clock’, Niyaw (ka) nuchan ‘I’m going home’.

In all the locative expressions the prepositional phrase does not signify explicitly whether the expression means a ‘to’-relation (allative) or an ‘at’-relation (adessive); for example, whether (ka) ijtik means ‘into’ or ‘inside’ depends on the context, not the form of the phrase: Wetzki ijtik (or tik) ne at ‘He/She fell into the water’, Nemi ijtik/tik ne at ‘He/She is (or lives) in the water’. There is no specific word for ‘from’ in Nawat; the ‘from’-relation (ablative) is also just read into the locative expressions according to context: Kiski tik ne at ‘He/She came out of the water’. Compare also Yawi ka Witzapan ‘He/She is going to Witapan’, Witz ka Witzapan ‘He/She is coming from Witzapan’.

Subjects and objects

Apart from the prepositional constructions, Nawat nouns, pronouns and noun phrases do not take markers of case or syntactic function. The same form (e.g. ne kunet ‘the child’, Luisa ‘Luisa’, yaja ‘him, her’, ne isiwaw Juan ‘John’s wife’), according to the context, may function as subject, object, possessor or prepositional complement. Nawat is a head-marking language, meaning that rather than marking function on dependents, it indexes for dependents on heads. In Latin, which is mainly a dependent-marking language, subjects are indicated by the combination of a head-marking strategy and a dependent-marking technique: the former is the use of the nominative case to mark the function of the subject, and the latter is the marking of verbs for the person and number of the subject. Consider the verb to be the head of this construction and the subject to be the dependent, we can analyse as follows the Latin sentence Ego dormio ‘I am sleeping’:

dependent

subject

EGO

‘I’ + nominative case

dependent-marking

head

verb

DORMI-O

‘sleep’ + first-person-singular subject index

head-marking

Nawat differs in having only head marking, and no dependent marking. Thus there is no indication of nominative case, only indexing of the subject on the verb, in Naja nikuchi ‘I sleep’:

dependent

subject

NAJA

‘I’

head

verb

NI-KUCHI

first-person-singular subject index + ‘sleep’

head-marking

The object relation is also indicated through head-marking in Nawat: there is again no case marker to attach to the object, only a further index attached to the verb that indicates the person and number of the object. Thus ‘I see you’ is (Naja) nimetzita (taja):

dependent

subject

NAJA

‘I’

head

verb

NI-METZ-ITA

1 sg. subj. + 2 sg. obj. + ‘see’

head-marking

dependent

object

TAJA

‘you’

Remember that naja and taja are redundant words here, since the single verb form nimetzita establishes the subject and object. Thus ‘I see you’ would normally be just Nimetzita.

There are distinct subject and object markers corresponding to each of the Nawat personal pronouns:

	SUBJECT MARKERS	OBJECT MARKERS
naja:	ni- ‘I’	nech- ‘me’
taja:	ti- ‘you (subject)’	metz- ‘you’ (object)
yaja:	Ø ‘he/she’	ki- ‘him/her’
tejemet:	ti- ‘we’	tech- ‘us’
anmejemet:	an- ‘you (pl.) (subject)’	metzin- ‘you (pl.) (object)’
yejemet:	Ø ‘they’	kin-‘them’

Examples: nikuchi ‘I sleep’, tikuchi ‘you sleep’, kuchi ‘he/she sleeps’, nechita ‘he/she sees me’, metzita ‘he/she sees you’, nimetzita ‘I see you’, tinechita ‘you see me’.

The third-person-singular object index ki- is the most common in transitive verbs, often taking the shorter form k-: kipia ‘he/she has him/her/it’, kita ‘he/she sees him/her/it’, nikpia ‘I have it’, nikita ‘I see it’, tikpia ‘you have it’, tikita ‘you see it’. When the index ‑k- precedes a verb stem beginning with k or kw it disappears completely: nikaki ‘I hear it’ (for *nik-kaki), nikwa ‘I eat it’ (for *nik-kwa).

Verbs with a plural subject take a plural suffix, the form of which varies according to the tense and mood of the verb: kuchit ‘they sleep’, kuchket ‘they slept’, kuchtiwit ‘they have slept’, kuchisket ‘they will sleep’, kuchiskiat ‘they would sleep’, ma kuchikan ‘let them sleep’, etc. In the first and second person plural, the appropriate subject prefix is also required, e.g. tikuchit ‘we sleep’, ankuchit ‘you (pl.) sleep’, etc.

In the subjunctive and imperative, the subject prefix for the second person singular and plural is shi-: shikuchi! ‘sleep!’, shikuchikan! ‘sleep! (pl.)’.

The object indexed in a Nawat transitive verb sometimes corresponds to an indirect object in European languages. We will refer to whichever object is marked on the Nawat verb as the nuclear object. In Nimetzmaka at ‘I give you water’, the object marker, underlined, indexes ‘you’, not ‘water’; ‘you’ is the nuclear object of this verb in Nawat. At ‘water’ may also be considered a kind of object or complement, yet it is cannot be indexed since a Nawat a verb can only have a maximum of one object index, which in this case is already occupied. We may refer to at in this sentence as an oblique complement.

Not only verbs take subject indexes in Nawat. Other words used as predicates can also take them. In such cases the verb ‘to be’ usually occurs in the English equivalent: (Naja) ni-siwat ‘I am a woman’, (Taja) ti Luisa ‘You are Luisa’. Even in a sentence like Yaja siwat ‘She is a woman’ or Luisa siwat ‘Luisa is a woman’, we may consider the predicate siwat to have the third-person subject index, ‘zero’.

Tenses

The following paradigm illustrates the Nawat tenses:

kuch-i (‘sleep’)

Present

ni-kuch-i

‘I sleep’

ti-kuch-i

kuch-i

ti-kuch-i-t

an-kuch-i-t

kuch-i-t

Subjunctive

ma ni-kuch-i

‘I should sleep’

(ma) shi-kuch-i

ma kuch-i

(ma) ti-kuch-i-kan

(ma) shi-kuch-i-kan

ma kuch-i-kan

Preterite

ni-kuch-ki

‘I slept’

ti-kuch-ki

kuch-ki

ti-kuch-ket

an-kuch-ket

kuch-ket

Perfecto

ni-kuch-tuk

‘I have slept’

ti-kuch-tuk

kuch-tuk

ti-kuch-tiwit

an-kuch-tiwit

kuch-tiwit

Future

ni-kuch-i-s

‘I will sleep’

ti-kuch-i-s

kuch-i-s

ti-kuch-i-sket

an-kuch-i-sket

kuch-i-sket

Conditional

ni-kuch-i-skia

‘I would sleep’

ti-kuch-i-skia

kuch-i-skia

ti-kuch-i-skiat

an-kuch-i-skiat

kuch-i-skiat

Pluperfect

ni-kuch-i-tuya

‘I had slept’

ti-kuch-i-tuya

kuch-i-tuya

ti-kuch-i-tuyat

an-kuch-i-tuyat

kuch-i-tuyat

Conditional perfect

ni-kuch-i-tuskia

‘I would have slept’

ti-kuch-i-tuskia

kuch-i-tuskia

ti-kuch-i-tuskiat

an-kuch-i-tuskiat

kuch-i-tuskiat

The vowel at the end of the present singular may be i, a or (less frequently) u. In some verbs this stem vowel disappears in the preterite and perfect (kuch-i ‘sleep’, kuch-ki, kuch-tuk; kis-a ‘go out’, kis-ki, kis-tuk), while in others it remains throughout the paradigm (ajsi ‘arrive’, ajsi-k, ajsi-tuk; panu ‘pass’, panu-k, panu-tuk).

Notice that in verbs that retain the stem vowel, the preterite singular ends in -k rather than ‑ki: compare kuch-ki ‘slept’, kis-ki ‘went out’ but ajsi-k ‘arrived’, panu-k ‘passed’. Some verbs that lose the stem vowel have a preterite without the -ki suffix, e.g. elkaw-a ‘forget’, pret. elkaw; tajtan-i ‘ask’, pret. tajtan.

In verbs whose present ends in -ia or -ua, a is the stem vowel and the preceding i or u is part of the stem. These verbs divide into two groups. A few, generally those with short stems, lose the stem vowel in the preterite and perfect and add -ki, -tuk regularly, but insert sh or j between the stem and the ending in these tenses: pi-a ‘have’, pish-ki, pish-tuk; ku-a ‘buy’, kuj-ki, kuj-tuk. Otherwise these verbs are regular.

The majority of verbs in -ia or -ua do not take -ki in the preterite but add j to the stem in the preterite and perfect: mutali-a ‘sit’, mutalij, mutalij-tuk; mikti-a ‘kill’, miktij, miktij-tuk; mutalu-a ‘run’, mutaluj, mutaluj-tuk; pashalu-a ‘go for a walk’, pashaluj, pashaluj-tuk. Verbs belonging to this group also lose the stem vowel a in the subjunctive, future and conditional, e.g. mutali-a ‘sit’, ma mutali ‘should sit’, mutali-s ‘will sit’, mutali-skia ‘would sit’.

The verbs yawi ‘go’ and witz ‘come’ are irregular: