Coptic Auxiliaries
The standard Coptic grammar posits many auxiliaries. The basic form of most Coptic predications is: AUX + subj + VERB. Where AUX determines tense, aspect, modality and polarity, and the verb is just an uninflected infinitive. The auxiliary forms are listed in the documentation for the XPOS tagset here.
See also the documentation of the aux relation.
- ⲟⲩⲛ – indefinite present marker
- ⲙⲛ – negative indefinite present marker
- ⲙⲛⲧⲉ – pronominal form of ⲙⲛ
- ϣⲁⲣⲉ – aorist aspect (it is generally the case that…), form for nominal subject
- ϣⲁ – aorist, form for pronominal subject
- ⲙⲉⲣⲉ – negative aorist (it is generally not the case), form for noun subject
- ⲙⲉ – negative aorist, form for pronoun subject
- ⲁ – positive past tense
- ⲙⲡⲉ – negative past (for noun subject)
- ⲙⲡ – negative past (for pronoun subject)
- ⲛⲉⲣⲉ – imperfect (for noun subject)
- ⲛⲉ – imperfect (for pronoun subject)
- ⲛⲁ – future tense
- ⲛⲧⲉ – ‘conjunctive’ (marks that a verb has identical tense aspect to its subordinating verb, whatever that is)
- ⲧⲁⲣⲉ – future conjunctive (let it be the case in the future …) (for noun subject)
- ⲧⲁⲣ – future conjunctive (let it be the case in the future …) (for pronoun subject)
- ϣⲁⲛⲧⲉ – limitative (indicates actions occurring until another action occurs)
- ⲙⲡⲁⲧⲉ – negative limitative (something has not yet occurred while something else happens)
- ⲛⲧⲉⲣⲉ – ‘precursive’ (one action happens after another)
- ⲉⲣϣⲁⲛ – conditional mood
- ⲉϣ, ϣ – potential mood (can…)
- ⲛⲉϣ – rare negated form of ⲉϣ “not be able to” – we’d like to not split the negation, since this negation is archaic (does not appear by itself for this form) and the negative form will appear separately in dictionaries as its own word: https://coptic-dictionary.org/entry.cgi?tla=C5674
- ϫⲡⲓ (jpi) – necessitative (ought to)
- ⲉⲣⲉ – standard prenominal positive optative
- ⲛⲛⲉ – negative optative
- ⲙⲁⲣⲉ – jussive (let it be the case now…)
- ⲙⲡⲣⲧⲣⲉ – negative jussive (may it not be the case…)